Re: le/lo

[And Rosta <a.rosta@UCLAN.AC.UK>]

Lojbab:
> >That's up to you, but should not be a choice made by the speech
> >community in general. Figurative speech is ubiquitous in even
> >the most mundane discourse. Furthermore, many people would
> >argue that there is no real difference between figurative and
> >literal: some would reject the difference altogether, seeing
> >the difference is a matter of degree, with no boundary between
> >them, while others (including me) would say that the distinction
> >exists only under a certain ontology (which coexists with
> >alternative ontologies).
>
> Suffice it to say that I will consider myself to take every statement you
> say literally unless it is marked in some way as figurative, with either
> some sign of metonymy or the "figurative" marker.

Fair enough: if I am faced with an unusually perverse interlocutor,
zo`o, then the onus is on me to adapt my discourse to make sufficient
accommodations to make myself understood. At least until I run out
of patience.

> YOu are correctthat there are some fuzzy edges on literality.  If I say
> "mi viska lo blanu zdani", then I am lcaiming that what I see is really
> a blue house.  Now, barring the inherent fuzziness of tanru, there is
> still the question of what it means for something to be "blanu".  Thus
> if instead I say "mi viska lo blanu" there is a question as to whether
> this is true if the house is a (red) brick house with all the trim
> and woodwork painted blue.
>
> But if I call a snowflake "lo xrula" because in some ways a snowflake may
> be taken to resemble a flower, such a figurative usage won't fly in Lojban
> (nor will it vofli zo'o).

(a) What you say is valid, but so is an ontology that denies
what you say, whereby the snowflake would merely be a xrula
to a lesser extent than a pansy.
(b) It could be (and has been) argued (and I agree), that in
actual language usage, your position does not apply. That is,
irrespective of whether it is possible in principle to decide
whether something is a xrula, in actual usage this is
irrelevant to the choice of whether to describe something as
a xrula.

So I conclude that your views on figurative use are inappropriate
because (a) they represent only one of more than one valid
ontologies, and (b) they contradict universals of pragmatics.

--And