From cowan@ccil.org Fri Aug 17 05:15:51 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: cowan@mercury.ccil.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_1); 17 Aug 2001 12:15:51 -0000 Received: (qmail 72003 invoked from network); 17 Aug 2001 12:15:51 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l9.egroups.com with QMQP; 17 Aug 2001 12:15:51 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mercury.ccil.org) (192.190.237.100) by mta2 with SMTP; 17 Aug 2001 12:15:50 -0000 Received: from cowan by mercury.ccil.org with local (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 15XiXV-0002WQ-00; Fri, 17 Aug 2001 08:15:49 -0400 Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Literal and Metaphor (was: pages) In-Reply-To: from Nick Nicholas at "Aug 17, 2001 03:13:44 am" To: Nick Nicholas Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 08:15:49 -0400 (EDT) Cc: lojban@yahoogroups.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL66 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: X-eGroups-From: John Cowan From: John Cowan Nick Nicholas scripsit: > Lojban doesn't do prototype semantics. I think it does, or can. Note the brief discussion in the Book about whether a teddy bear cu cribe (answer: yes). Predicate logic does not demand that we know, for every P and x, whether P(x). > [I]f it's good for > {botpi} (though I think the whole bottle-requires-lid thing is wrong --- > but that's by the by), then it's just as good for {cukta}. That is different. A teddy bear fits the cribe paradigm: it has a proper x1 (Teddy himself) and a proper x2 ("teddy"). A bottle-sans-lid does not have a proper x4. > Things with pages (physical books) are a subset of books This was actually discussed at a Logfest, many and many a year ago. IIRC, the outcome was that "Pass me that cukta" is actually a kind of raising, or metaphor, or something of the sort: all cukta are in fact abstract. > The issue is, rather, is this a good lujvo for Web, *for people other than > you and me*? If someone sees {balcukta}, will they be able to tell, without > looking it up, that it means the Web? I think it is rather too much to demand of any lujvo that someone be able to identify its x1 as being a unique object like the WWW. Similarly, IMHO cakcinki is a unique and memorable lujvo for "beetle" (member of Coleoptera), but it would be difficult to guess that that was what it meant *a priori*, and the more you know about cinki, the harder. (IIRC, Mark has made this argument about fu'ivla vs. lujvo in Klingon already.) > And is that recognisability a proper > or valid criterion for whether something is a good lujvo or not? Will they > remember it, once they have seen it? Will they rankle against it -- just > like Jay the other day objected to {selma'o} for 'lexeme' on the Wiki? Is > {jordatnymu'e} any better? Is {samclupa}? Is {skamrxuebe}? Is {la'ogy. WWW > gy.}? I think the last is best, actually. -- John Cowan cowan@ccil.org One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore --Douglas Hofstadter