Re: brain fart metaphor

[ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>]

Skot:
> >I don't think {broda brode} entails {brode}. So technically, {besna kafke}
> >is legit. Furthermore, even if you used just {kafke}, that too is okay;
> >you'd be claiming it was a cough/fart, but then that's metaphor.
> I think you've gone too far.  I'm with you that {broda brode} need not
> entail {brode}, but I do think that {brode} *does* entail {brode}, so
> {kafke} alone should be marked with {pe'a}.

Yes, of course {brode} entails {brode}, {kafke} entails {kafke}. If
you say {ti kafke} you're claiming that this is an eructation. If
this is a mental aberration, then your description is metaphorical.
But it is no business of the language to legislate the use of metaphor.
Metaphor is an extralinguistic phenomenon. You may add pea(nai) if
you wish to comment on your own usage, but there can be no obligation
on you to do so.

> >As for whether you should use {pea}, there are no circumstances in
> >which you should use {pea}, but this is a circumstance where it would
> >be acceptable to do so.
> I disagree that {pe'a} is always optional.  Failure to use {pe'a} when
> a gismu or lujvo is being used metaphorically is (IMHO) improper.  As
> Don noted in one of our Lojban exchanges on the subject, Lojban is a
> *logical* language.  If you assert a predicate, the predicate should be
> true (epistemological issues aside).  If you wish to assert that it is
> metaphorically true, say so.

If I metaphorically describe an aberration as a fart then I am claiming
the aberration is a fart. No addition of {pea} is going to change that.
That claim is, by most reckoning, false, but {ti kafke} is nonetheless
communicative, because it metaphorically implies another proposition,
"ti is aberration".

Metaphor belongs to the extralinguistic domain of pragmatics. The
grammar can (by definition) specify only what is intralinguistic.

> My position, though, is that tanru are already metaphors, and don't,
> therefore, require {pe'a} markers.

Nothing requires {pea} markers.

> The particular point at issue is whether the places of {broda brode},
> being the same as {brode}, may be filled by metaphorical objects.  Does
> a {besna kafke} require a {te kafke}, or may it merely have a {pe'a te
> kafke}?  Don (and John Cowan, it seems) think not.  (I'm actually
> undecided, not really being competent to decide, but am arguing in
> favor of it as advocatus diabolus.)

I'm not sure.

> Meanwhile, can anyone come up with a selbri for "metaphor"?  I'd like
> to move some of this discussion *back* to lojban, but it's tough when
> I can't say "Tanru are metaphors" for lack of the darn word.

Some ghastly attempts must exist in the archives, for Jorge & I both
coined uncompelling lujvo for "metaphor".

coo, mie And