Re: Hot, Cold, and Temperature

Henrik Theiling wrote:

>John Quijada <jq_ithkuil@...> writes:
>> Ithkuil utilizes the third approach, i.e., a stem meaning 'linear spatial
>> extent or degree' as opposed to 'shortness' or 'length.' To quote from
Sec.
>> 10.3 of the Ithkuil grammar:
>>
>> "Rather than lexicalize such concepts as pairs of binary oppositions,
>> Ithkuil delineates these qualities as varying points along a continuous
>> range. In other words, in Ithkuil you do not say 'X is cold and Y is
hot',
>> but rather 'X has less temperature and Y has greater temperature'.
>> Similarly, one does not say 'A is near to me and B is far from me', but
>> rather 'the distance from me to A (or proximity of A to me) is less than
>> the distance from me to B (or proximity of B to me)'.
>
>Ok.  But is Ithkuil designed to be neutral?  I mean, with this system,
>you would still have a notion of 'larger' and 'smaller' for
>temperature and distance which, if you only have one word for each of
>these binary concepts, would introduce a bias.  You could not
>distinguish 'closer' from 'less far away'.  So for a neutral language,
>I'd expect that still both concepts be there: hot and cold, far and
>near, each member of a pair using an opposite degree.
>
>As for things like temperature and distance, this might possibly be
>able to be argued to be neutral, but what about 'nice' vs. 'mean' --
>if you only have one term, then you'd associate each end of your
>degree scale with either 'good' and 'bad', which would then coincide
>with 'large' and 'small', which would imply a strong bias to each and
>every word using the degree affixes.
>
>> Note that the choice of translation for the latter stem as either
>> ‘distance’ or ‘proximity’ becomes arbitrary,
>
>Here, I'd disagree, see above.  The two terms introduce a focus on the
>direction you're thinking in, which I consider quite important.
>
>> Virtually all Western descriptive and dimensional oppositions are
>> similarly handled in Ithkuil as mere variance in the quantity of a
>> single quality, the degree of an attribute, or the extent along a
>> spatio-temporal range or continuum."
>
>You only use these for spacetime?  Then the coincidence with a
>'good'-'bad' scale probably drops out.  I still think I'd like the
>difference between 'close' and 'not far'.
>
>Consider someone talking about tea (or coffee).  What about 'it's hot
>enough' vs. 'it's cold enough'?  How'd you translate those?  I'd not
>be satisfied with 'the temperature pleases my personal taste'. :-)
________________
I'm not sure I'm understanding your critique fully, but it seems that you
are at least saying that the collapsing of binary oppositions into a single
continuum to which degree is applied is inferior to using a system
employing binary oppositions, because the former does not allow you
to "introduce a focus on the direction you're thinking in" as implied by
the distinction between "it's hot enough" vs. "it's cold enough."  Note
that the Ithkuil translation of these 2 sentences would be loosely
translatable as "it's temperature suffices" showing that, indeed, Ithkuil
finds the hot-cold lexical distinction unnecessary for the following
reasons:

Ithkuil semantics and pragmatics always reflects the underlying "cognitive
intent" of an utterance, i.e., what is the intended purpose of an
utterance?  In the case of "it's hot enough" vs. "it's cold enough" the
speaker's underlying intent is to state that the temperature of the object
in question sufficiently matches the speaker's intent, expectation, or
desire of what the temperature of the object should be for whatever
contextual purpose the object was intended.  So if the object is a cup of
coffee, the intent, expectation or desire is that it be sufficiently hot to
drink.  If the object is the weather and the context is skiing, then the
intent, expectation, or desire is that it be sufficiently cold for snow.
Ithkuil assumes the speaker/addressee already know the context, i.e.,
already know whether we're talking about coffee or the weather, so it
becomes superfluous to lexicalize a context-dependent distinction between
two "ends" of a binary opposition.  Nevertheless, let's say the underlying
context is NOT known by the addressee.  How would Ithkuil "encompass" the
cognitive intent/expectation/desire linguistically?  By stating the
underlying context overtly, thus:  "The temperature suffices for drinking
this coffee," vs. "The temperature suffices for there to be snow for
skiing."  For more information, you might wish to read Sec. 10.5.2 of the
Ithkuil grammar where this whole concept is discussed in detail as applied
to the example of translative motion, paths, and trajectories.

Note also that depending on the particular suffix used, affix degrees in
Ithkuil are NOT simply a two-valued "positive polarity" (from zero value to
maximum value) scale, but rather a three-valued "positive/negative
polarity" scale (from negative maximum value THROUGH zero-value to maximum
positive value).  It is with this positive/negative polority scale of
gradation that Ithkuil can have a single root that encompasses
the "nice/mean" semantic scale of Western languages.

--John Quijada

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