responses to various technical issues raised

[cbmvax!snark.uu.net!lojbab]

Subject: misc technical responses to questions
to a. protin, re the response from jim carter
  Jim's response was more or less the same as mine, though I don't
  especially like the translations he gives.  However, his example from
gua!spi points up a distinction that I did not make.  Neither
   da barda nanmu      nor da nanmu barda
means what Jim's version says, which is "something is big and a adult-male-human"
The latter would be expressed in Lojban through use of a logical connective:
   da barda je nanmu
The essence of Lojban tanru is NOT logical, but is a semantically ambiguous
'metaphorical usage' (pardon me John C. - I'll get to this in a moment).
Theoretically, any tanru should be re-expressible in some number of additional
ways to make it clear just what the 'modification' the first term is making
to the second term.  Thus my interpretation of da barda nanmu could be
more explicitly expressed using
   da nanmu gi'e barda leka nanmu
"something is a man, AND is big in dimension/property adult-male-human-ness"
whatever such property might be defined as (you could specify other places
such as height and weight, and use man-ness as the 'standard' (x3 place) that
'da' is big for"  but this is getting complicated.

turning to J. Cowan's writings, of which there have been several good ones
   1. on keyword proposals for tanru and lujvo - I'll present your proposals
LogFest for a fair hearing because your points of definition are valid.
However, I personally am opposed to the changes, based on my intent for
English keywords.  These are NOT inended to be literal translations of the
Lojban, but are supposed to me short memory hooks to hang the Lojban word on.
Key is 'short' and your proposals are NOT 'short' keywords.  Secondly, they
are jargon that will mean absolutely nothing to any non-linguist, i.e. the
majority of the community - they give no clues as to meaning.  Even if you know
to use the linguistic concept of 'compound', most people will not accept a
multi-word non-hyphenated construct as a 'compound', whether you qualify it
as 'open'.  In short, the linguistic jargon is itself metaphorical.  The book
I'm reading on lexicography use different terminology, by the way.  I suspect
that there really isn;t a good English equivalent for tanru - which is why we
use the Lojban in talking about the language.
'metaphor' for all its faults and ambiguity, uniquely describes the major
distinguishing feature of tanru, an ambiguous, metaphorical relationship
between two concepts, that is merged into a gestalt.  your definition that
'metaphor' involves the transfer of meaning from one concept to another, which
is what happens in tanru.
The fact that a metaphor is literal rather than figurative does not make it
any less a metaphor.  Just because many American poets don't like metaphors
that are analytic does not mean that such things are not metaphors.
   A minor point against, by the way, is that keywords are also meant to be
short for the purposes of typing them in for LogFlash.  Especially when you
want to use a non-obvious keyword, making it long, means only that more
people will miss it through typos.  It will not make them better understand
the concept.  A better bet would be to clarify the long-form definition of the
word tanru (and lujvo) to include the technical linguistic jargon.
   We are trying to move AWAY from the use of linguistic jargon in our teaching
materials, with the original stimulus being Nancy Thalblum, who you are
studying with.  Ask her opinion on the jargon keywords, and be prepared for
strong disagreement.
   Nora, by the way, like the term 'modification pair' as a fairly clear non-
jargon explanation of tanru.  I would favor trying this in the longer English
definition, and trying it in teaching materials that I and others wFrom hombre!marob.masa.com!cowan Wed May  9 01:59:24 1990
Return-Path: <hombre!marob.masa.com!cowan>
Received: by marob.masa.com (/\=-/\ Smail3.1.18.1 #18.7)
	id <m0hSk4x-0003BjC@marob.masa.com>; Wed, 9 May 90 01:59 EDT
Received: by hombre.MASA.COM (smail2.5)
	id AA01751; 8 May 90 06:40:44 EDT (Tue)
Received: from cbmvax.UUCP by rutgers.edu (5.59/SMI4.0/RU1.3/3.05) with UUCP 
	id AA12121; Thu, 12 Apr 90 05:32:18 EDT
Received: by cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (5.57/UUCP-Project/Commodore Jan 13 1990)
	id AA24681; Wed, 11 Apr 90 06:19:14 EDT
Received: from snark.UUCP by vu-vlsi.Villanova.EDU (4.1/SMI-4.0)
	id AA08915; Wed, 11 Apr 90 05:21:16 EDT
Received: by snark.uu.net (smail2.3)
	id AA27739; 11 Apr 90 04:46:13 EDT (Wed)
Received: from RUTGERS.EDU by uunet.uu.net (5.61/1.14) with SMTP 
	id AA08833; Tue, 10 Apr 90 19:42:17 -0400
Received: from phri.UUCP by rutgers.edu (5.59/SMI4.0/RU1.3/3.05) with UUCP 
	id AA00401; Tue, 10 Apr 90 16:13:09 EDT
Received: by phri.UUCP (smail2.5)
	id AA01539; 10 Apr 90 13:21:59 EST (Tue)
Received: by marob.masa.com (/\=-/\ Smail3.1.18.1 #18.7)
	id <m0hIOPD-00017IC@marob.masa.com>; Tue, 10 Apr 90 12:49 EDT
Message-Id: <m0hIOPD-00017IC@marob.masa.com>
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 90 12:49 EDT
From: marob.masa.com!cowan (John Cowan)
To: snark.uu.net!lojban-list
Subject: Cmene for the Lojban lerfu?
Status: RO

Does Lojban include these, analogous to the English use of "alpha", "bravo",
"charlie", "david", etc?  Naturally in Lojban, unique cmene would be needed.

If this topic has not yet been considered (I'm pretty ignorant about Lojban),
I think it is important that the cmene be easy to distinguish.  The Esperanto
letter-names, a, bo, co, c^o, do, etc. are very similar to one another and
easy to confuse:  spelling out a word in Esperanto does nothing to aid in its
comprehension.  Spelling-out is important in English for people who are
hearing-impaired or in noisy environments, and should be equally important
in Lojban.