a challenge

[lojbab (Bob LeChevalier)]

lojban-list:
Now HERE is a translation challenge and a real test of Lojban's tense
system or something.  Can anyone figure out how to do this in any way in
Lojban?  (I won't claim to know the answer on this one.)  Remember that
there are metaphors here that are really tricky - you'll have to think
about how we do the same thing in English, and then how - if we do - we
avoid the metaphorical use in Lojban.

Extra credit if the tense metaphors really look like tenses in the
result, but are different from the standard tense system.  I suspect its
within the power of the language.

conlang:
Same challenge for any of your other languages.  Has anyone worked
with a tense system drastically different from that of English?
I'd especially like to see if the "archaic form of Lojban" %^)
could handle it.

lojbab

---------------------------------------------------------------
Date:    Wed, 14 Aug 1991 15:03:50 +0800 (SST)
From: A_DENCH@FENNEL.CC.UWA.OZ.AU
Subject: The Bladder Slugs of Yik

The Bladder Slugs of Yik.

For the general entertainment of all you Metaphor fans out there, I am
posting a first year undergraduate assignment which I conceived (maybe
in a drug-crazed state but more likely commuting) some three years ago.
Sadly it is often the only thing introductory linguistics students
remember from their year of Linguistics 100.

Should any of you be inclined to use this yourselves, be my guest.  The
assignment follows lectures on temporal metaphor for which the following
sources provided the main inspiration and examples:

Foley, W. (1980) "Functional grammar and cultural anthropology" Canberra
Anthropology, 3:67-85.

Geertz, C. (1975) "Person, time and conduct in Bali". in "The
Interpretation of Cultures" London:  Hutchinson. pp 360-411.

Klein, H. (1987) "The future precedes the past:  time in Toba" Word
38:173-185.

Lakoff, G. & M. Johnson (1980) "Metaphors we live by" University of
Chicago Press.  (surprise, surprise).

And I think my inspiration for the Bladder Slugs themselves was most
likely James Tiptree's sci-fi novel "Up the Walls of the World", which I
read years ago somewhere but have never seen since.

Read on and have fun!

Alan Dench
Department of Anthropology
University of Western Australia
Nedlands, WA 6009
A_DENCH@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au

        _____________________________

University of Western Australia
Department of Anthropology

Linguistics 100 (UWA)
Tutorial Assignment: Temporal Metaphors

You are Chief Linguist aboard the starship Benjamin Lee Whorf orbiting
the gaseous giant Arcturus IV.  Your most pressing task is to compile an
analysis of the temporal system of the Yik language of the freefalling
Bladder Slugs.  Given the following translations from Yik, what
metaphor(s) seem to prevail in the Yik temporal system?  Feel free to
draw diagrams and offer explanations.

a.  I perceived a large glabbage upperday.

b.  The time for implosion is just below us.

c.  The pressure increases, the light is dimming,
    I'm plummeting old.

d.  How deep until we fall on dense times.

e.  Three days above I consumed a large splodj.

f.  In the rarified days of my youth, I set my life
    on a helical path.

g.  The foolish Yik lives like a falling space rock.

h.  At darkest bottom, we all meet at the centre.

i.  The aliens, who live for eternity high above the days
    of our youth, believe the universe is expanding. But
    according to the great physicist Alblort Einslug, it
    is merely moving up into its own "past".

j.  All lives converge. At impact we will share our
    common destiny.

k.  I hope our bladderlings will rise into the upper
    reaches of the brightest past.

l.  I believe the shadows of our downtime bladderlings
    fell across us upperday.
__________________

Good luck.  See you lower.
----
lojbab = Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
         2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA
         703-385-0273
         lojbab@snark.thyrsus.com

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