Re: CHAT: Religion, Philosophy & Politics

On Tue, 4 May 0100 23:56:44 -0400, John Cowan <cowan@...> wrote:

>Herman Miller scripsit:
>
>> Interesting. Jarrda uses essentially the same solution as Loglan, in the
>> case of words such as "large". But "red" is specifically defined as a
>> particular frequency of light. If you claim that something is "red" in
>> Jarrda, what that basically means is that it is more similar to the
>> definition of "red" than it is to any of the other words in the same
>> category.
>
>The trouble is that something can look red without reflecting that
>frequency of light at all.  The human vision system is extremely complex.
True. A better definition would be a specific point on the CIE chromaticity
diagram or some other recognized color standard. Actually, Jarrda "red" was
originally defined as the color of the red phosphor of a CRT monitor, which
may vary from one monitor to another. Any choice for a specific definition
of "red" is going to be somewhat arbitrary, and defining "red" as "redder
than" doesn't get around that problem. In any case, Jarrda isn't intended
to be a logical language with precise definitions.

By the way, to say "redder" in Jarrda you actually have to use a phrase
like "x is nearer to red than y" or "x exceeds y in the quality of
redness". (Tirelat, on the other hand, has a comparative suffix -sai.)

--
languages of Azir------> ----<http://www.io.com/~hmiller/languages.html>---
    h i l r i . o         "If all Printers were determin'd not to print any
     m l e @ o c m       thing till they were sure it would offend no body,
   (Herman Miller)       there would be very little printed." -Ben Franklin