Re: tanru semantics

[jimc@MATH.UCLA.EDU]

And Rosta writes:
> ...
> If _wolf je man_ really means 'wolf-cum-man', how is this different
> from _wolf man_? That is, _wolf-cum-man curse_ seems pretty
> much the same as ((wolf man) curse), though of course not the
> same as (wolf (man curse)).

The essence of metaphor is in figuratively sparking off meanings outside
the normal definitions of the component words.  Any attempt to specify
the precise meaning of metaphors spoils the whole process.  Thus this
whole debate about jeks seems counterproductive to me.

I think people see patterns of definite meaning in Lojban tanru, and
they are trying to nail down what that meaning is.  In much more detail
I have done this with dikyjvo.  But dikyjvo, or nailed-down
conjunctions, or whatever, are the antithesis of metaphors.  A big
complaint people had in the debate over dikyjvo was that the
grammatical structure "tanru" was said in the rules to be semantically
a metaphor, so how could it also be semantically a non-metaphor?  I
agree with this complaint; let's change the rules and require true
metaphors to be specially indicated with a separate conjunction.  I
believe there really are definite rules inside tanru crying to get out,
and they would substantially strengthen Lojban.

To answer And's question, "je" means that you produce the meaning sets
(or whatever you call them in Montague calculus) of two tanru terms and
you take their intersection.  In other words, it does the same kind of
thing that ".e" does.  The intersection then modifies the next tanru
term the same as a single word might, metaphorically.

Latinoid "X cum Y" might be interpreted as "basically X but having some
characteristics of Y", which would come out as a Lojban metaphoric
tanru "Y X", sort of.  For "werewolf" I vote for "labno joi remna" i.e.
a mixture of properties.  As for "werewolf curse", in an ideal Lojban
adapted to dikyjvo, "curse" would be defined with a place for what
you're cursed to do, that attracts modifiers such as "werewolf", so a
"werewolf curse" would unambiguously be a curse in which the victim
would become a werewolf.

                -- jimc