TECH: Figurative speech: a minor change proposal

[John Cowan <cowan@SNARK.THYRSUS.COM>]

Frank Schultz has been talking here and on conlang about different kinds of
compounds: semantic restriction ("blue house"), semantic extension ("wolf
man"), poetic figurative forms ("broken heart").  Most tanru/lujvo are of
the first kind, but the second kind is also possible; we have special marking
particles for "figurative speech".  This posting discusses how the
current markers work and some of the motivation behind them, and proposes
a slight change to make them both simpler and more flexible.

Currently, we have two cmavo for figurative speech: "pe'a" (selma'o PEhA) and
"po'a" (selma'o POhA).  Both are grammarless particles -- they can occur
anywhere.  When both are used, they are the left and right markers of
figurative speech:

1)      do jimpe le mi pe'a spofu risna po'a
        you understand the of-me [figurative] broken heart [end fig]
        You understand my broken heart.

The use of the markers in 1) signals a culturally dependent metaphor --
people from non-English-speaking cultures are not expected to understand it,
but are at least cautioned not to take it literally.

When "pe'a" is used without "po'a", the figurative intention persists
indefinitely: this could be used in skaldic poetry or the like, where all
tanru are probably figurative.  However, it is also valid to use "po'a"
without "pe'a".  In this case, "po'a" is treated as if it belonged to
selma'o UI: it applies to the previous word; if the previous word begins
or ends a grammatical construct, it applies to the whole construct.
The regular mechanism for extending the scope of attitudinals ("fu'e" and
"fu'o") does not apply to "po'a".

The proposal is to abandon this grammatical separation, and make both "pe'a"
and "po'a" regular members of UI.  The intention is to then separate them
semantically.  "pe'a" would be assigned to poetic metaphor, whereas "po'a"
would be used for semantic extension.  (Memory hook:  pe'a/pemci.)  This
change (techfix 33) would simplify the grammar a bit, as three selma'o
(PEhA, POhA, UI) would be merged; this would allow removing some hard-coded
C support as well, although not enough to be a substantial consideration.
For occasions when figurative speech must be prolonged, the regular UI
mechanism with "fu'e" and "fu'o" would be used.

All UI cmavo can be negated with "-nai", giving a polar negation.  "pe'anai"
would mean "literal no matter how absurd", and "po'anai" would mean
"a semantic restriction even though it looks like an extension".

In addition, both "pe'a" and "po'a" would be given rafsi, -pev- and -pov-
respectively, to allow the creation of figurative lujvo.  A lujvo beginning
with pev- might have a totally erratic place structure.

Comments?

--
John Cowan      cowan@snark.thyrsus.com         ...!uunet!lock60!snark!cowan
                        e'osai ko sarji la lojban.