Re: TECH: pe'a/po'a proposal (long)

[Nick Nicholas <nsn@MULLIAN.EE.MU.OZ.AU>]

The Seraphim surely rejoiced when Logical Language Group spoke thus:
}John Cowan writes:
}>Subject:      TECH: Figurative speech: a minor change proposal

I've left this a tad late, but I think I'm still in before the cutoff.

I agree with John's proposal of a grammar change; having a different
grammar for PEhA POhA and UI is redundant. In fact, there's many other
situations where UI-scoping may be used to advantage to remove grammemes,
but that's not important. I further think that retaining POhA as a terminator
to PEhA, while allowing NAI and CAI after them, is an unneccesary complication.

Like Lojbab and Nora, I am hesitant about the nature of semantic extension.
I don't have the time to analyse the lujvo corpus *sigh*, but it is true
that what can be analysed as the heads of tanru do not always appear in
final position --- if the tanru can be said to have a head at all. Thus
a {balvi speni} is not a {speni} at all, but a {balvi}; and a {blari'o} =
{blanu joi crino} is not a {crino}. We don't feel that these have to be
marked. I suspect that a lot of these semantic extension cases can be
paraphrased into what I'd call a Deeper Tanru Structure, which only
involves semantic restriction or explicit joins like {joi}, and that these
extensions are properly considered as abbreviations of such Deep Structures.
I'm not really substantiating this hunch of mine, so feel free to demolish it.

In any case, I think it more advantageous that we consider metaphoricity
(urgh) to be a continuum, that we allow {pe'acu'e} to cover these cases
between literalness and outright no relation to the tertanru; and since
{pe'acu'e} will be doing {po'a}'s proposed job, to drop {po'a} (which at
this stage would be greatly appreciated).

Incidentally: I think the North/South/East/West FAhA cmavo should be
dropped and replaced with appropriate {fi'o} expression, since FAhA is
clearly open-ended, languages can come up with an indefinite number of
basic categories, and I don't think having North as {be'a} (or whatever)
instead of {fi'o berti} actually accomplishes that much.

Of course, that's just me :)
---
'Dera me xhama t"e larm"e,            T  Nick Nicholas, CgS & CS, Melbourne Uni
 Dera mbas blerimit                   |  nsn@munagin.ee.mu.oz.au (IRC: nicxjo)
 Me xhama t"e larm"e!                 |  Milaw ki ellhnika/Esperanto parolata/
 Lumtunia nuk ka ngjyra tjera.'       |  mi ka'e tavla bau la lojban. je'uru'e
 - Martin Camaj, _Nj"e Shp'i e Vetme_ |                *d'oh!*