Unlurking for a second to top post as this discussion converges on a few of my interests.
>> > He touched on the concept in some of the Uplift Novels, where galactic >> > languages have generally been constructed in a way that eliminates >> > metaphore. > > I don't recall that.. and it would have struck me, I would have > > thought, since it seems impossible to have language without > > metaphor. It's almost not language unless there's metaphor. Could a sufficient condition of such a language be to enable speakers to fully avoid metaphor, rather than to fully prevent? In other words, when used a certain way, the language fully lacks metaphoric content. I think a language that fully prevents metaphoric content would need to meet two conditions: it would be fully definitional, and to do that, you'd need a rather interesting, if not impossible, complete ontology of the universe. In other words, you'd need to be able to refer to anything in the universe uniquely and successfully without referencing other things in it by metaphor. So not: "Yeah, well, a cat is like a dog with more attitude and a penchant for mice." So I'd err in having a method for using metaphor in that language in order to define. And later, reference only the definitions. Carolyn Okay so that's not quite a top post. _______________________________________________ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
