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[Guy Steele <cbmvax!uunet!Think.COM!gls>]

   From: jimc@math.ucla.edu
   Date: Wed, 12 Jun 91 14:00:19 +0100

   > Completely aside from the theological content of this discussion, you
   > have hit on a point that has bugged me about Loglan for twenty
   > years: I am not entirely convinced that distinguishing names and
   > predicates is such a good idea after all.  Is not a name merely a
   > predicate that you are pretty sure happens to be satisfied by a
   > single thing (whatever a "thing" is)?  

   I agree.  One of my various Old Loglan proposals was for a "name tense"
   which would turn a selbri (e.g. solji djacu) into a name (Goldwater).
   Foreign names like .djan. would be interpreted as funny predicates 
   scarcely recognizable morphologically, and "la" would be like "le"
   except it has an implied "name tense".  It went over like a lead balloon.
   But I continue to believe that when you use a word as a name, you
   disconnect its usual meaning and turn it into a special kind of predicate
   with special semantics.  

   > Luciano-Pavarotti can Enrico-Caruso better than anyone else alive today.

   Unfortunately you end up saying "Luciano Pavarotti IS Enrico Caruso"
   under a strict predicate interpretation.  

Which, in some sense, is exactly what I mean; the very problem
is with the word "is".  Maybe "Luciano Pavarotti IS Enrico Caruso"
sounds funny in English, but "Luciano Pavarotti is today's Enrico Caruso"
does not.  Now consider "Jimi Hendrix is God"; I think that some who
utter this may indeed mean that JH and JHWH are exactly the same entity,
but others may mean it rather metaphorically.  "Is" in English actually
seldom carries the precise meaning of the equality predicate in logic.

So when I say   la lutcian. pavarot. me la .enrik. karus.
shall I consider that a false sentence in Lojban or a true
sentence using an idiomatic metaphor?