Re: VL-TRANS: a favorite saying Rob Zook Tue, 21 Oct 1997 22:12:56 -0500 At 03:55 PM 10/21/97 -0500, Saul wrote: >At 02:45 PM 10/21/97 -0500, Rob wrote: >>"kahs'khiori th'thya" does not translate to "I am a shooting >>star" exactly, the ambiguity in this case arises in the >>English translation. >> >>More literally translated "shooting star = self". Which >>sounds nonsensical unless one assumes a poetic mode of >>speaking. > >Well, that was my point. But I still don't see much difference >between > > a: I am a shooting star. > b: shooting star = ego > c: An equivalence relates shooting star and ego. > >Unless you're focussing on the difference between equality and >identity. In this particular case, yes that exactly. >>>Or something originally English: >>> >>>"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps >>>it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step >>>to the music which he hears, however measured or far away." >> >>Same thing in E-Prime: >> >>If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps _this >>occurs_ because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to >>the music which he hears however measured or far away. > >What pace? What drummer? What music? What distance? Metaphorical of course, as in the original, mine just eliminates that ambiguous little pest, the "is of" identity. >>Or "perhaps he hears a different drummer". >> >>An unambiguous grammer does not imply a lack of gratuitous >>metaphors. The fact that Thoreau did not refer to an existant >>drummer or music does not mean the language to express such an >>utterance must have ambiguous grammatical rules. > >Why "gratuitous?" Thoreau's metaphor lifts this above the rather >pedestrian observation that people are different and should express >that difference. Just "Spocking" out for a second there. From a strictly effiency stand point, one can express the message message without the metaphors. Metaphorical speech adds to the informational content only an emotional overtone. Which only seems useful in terms of persuation. Which works for humans, but why would a Vulcan need an emotional overtone to convince? In the case of poetry, it adds a different dimension, but still it seems an emotion or non-rational one. Not that I regard that as bad, but in English we use metaphors so much people get lost in spooks sometimes talking about metaphorical "things" as if they were existential "things". >That tends to refer to the possibility of sentences with >indeterminate subjects, or over-use of pronouns till one can >no longer determine who did what, or deictic confusion... Hmmm..,Saul somewhere after "That", I lost you. >>Right now the Vulcan language seems to do that. I just want us >>to keep it that way. The fact that Vulcan does not have a "to >>be" or "is of" identity implies this idea to me. > >Unfortunately, identity is a primary pillar of metaphor. I would add that the "id of" identity only makes sense in a metaphorical way. Also that you can get along just fine without it. >I'm not saying the grammar should or shouldn't include it -- >any language consists of limitations and a poet's job is to >get around them. Well, in our culture at least, people have abused the "is of" identity so much I think it should disappear. Saying some existant thing has the same identity as some other existant thing does not make any rational sense. If we have no modes of metaphorical speech and non-metaphorical speech it's all to easy to get them confused. >All I was originally saying is that natural languages are >ambiguous, because you seemed to be saying that Vulcan >shouldn't be. Well, I did mean that, but I was not thinking of poetry, so I guess we must leave room for metaphor. However, I don't think we have to have an ambiguous grammer or semantics to do it. I agree all natural languages suffer from ambiguity. I think that after the Reformation that Vulcans would have reformed their language, at least a bit. I see no reason why we cannot have a totally logical mode of Vulcan in which one simply cannot form untrue sentances. And a more metaphorical mode in which one can speak of imaginary things. Rob Z.