xi, kennings, jvajvo (was Re: Are tanru really metaphors?)

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

[Nice to see Ron H-E's self-professedly papilionine mind back with
us conlangers...]

> At 2:21 PM -0500 12/5/97, Robert Chassell wrote:
>
> >... how to express kennings in Lojban, such as "flame of battle" for
> >"sword"...
> >
> >One solution is mentioned in chapter 13 of the refgram:
> >
> >    Alone among the cmavo of selma'o UI, {pe'a} has a rafsi, namely
> >    {pev}.  This rafsi is used in forming figurative (culturally
> >    dependent) lujvo, whose place structure need have nothing to do
> >    with the place structure of the components.

If I understand it correctly, the jvajvo rules of the lujvo chapter
are recommendations rather than prescriptions. Hence "jamnyfagri"
could mean "sword". However, if it's already in the dictionary
and means something else (e.g. napalm), then it can't mean "sword".

The tanru "jamna fagri" can, I think, mean "sword", but it must
have the sumti place structure of "fagri".

The problem with kennings is that they are conventional. You
want your reader to know to look the phrase up in the kenning
dictionary.

My solution: is it possible ofr a brivla to have a {xi}
"subscript"? The subscript could indicate that the brivla comes from
a nonstandard lexicon. Then even if {jamnyfagri xi la standard}
means "napalm", {jamnyfagri xi la kenning} could mean "sword".
Perhaps there is some way of toggling the whole text so the
hearer looks the word up in the kenning list first and only
consults the standard lexicon if the word isn't in the kenning
list. Maybe {ni`o xi la kenning} might do that.

--And