More on Kennexions. If you are not familiar with this gameform, see the URL in my signature. As I was drifting off to sleep the other night (one of the most fruitful times for me), it occurred to me that there seems to be a clear connection between Norse kennings and Nahuatl difrasismo. For example, the shopworn gold silver -------- = ---------- sun moon gives four kennings: gold = sun-silver sun = gold-moon silver = moon-gold moon = silver-sun What became apparent is that it also gives two difrasismo: gold + silver = precious metal sun + moon = heavenly body These two artificially generated difrasismo do not seem different in principle from the Nahuatl "flower and song" for "poetry" or "water and hill" for "town." (This is barring the possibility, as Mark Line suggested, that they are periphrastic genitives -- "the flower of the song" and "the water of the hill" -- an issue which, I take it, is not yet settled.) Note that what the two artificial difrasismo refer to is what Mark Line calls the "tertium comparationes" of the two terms. So we can get difrasismo from kennings. With a little nudge, we can get kennings from difrasismo too. Take "flower and song." Treat the two parts of this difrasismo as the "numerators" in a kenning analogy: flower song -------- = --------- stem voice ... seems to work out pretty well: flower = stem-song stem = flower-voice song = voice-flower voice = song-stem In discussions at the Bamboo Garden, Mark has pointed out to me that many languages have periphrasis like difrasismo. He gave one example in, I think, Malay: the tertium comparationes of "table and chair" is "furniture." Let's try that one: chair table -------- = --------- sitting setting chair = sitting-table sitting = chair-setting table = setting-chair setting = table-sitting All right. I should admit at this point that I have not been able to come up with a kenning for "water and hill" that does not seem utterly forced. Anyone? Here's a snippet I just sent to an active Lojbanist who is also interested in the GBG: >My game, Kennexions, uses BEL (Bliss-Encoded Lojban, working name), which >is >an ideographic coding of Lojban using mostly >Semantography/Blissymbolics, a >sort of pasigraphy. The basic Kennexions >"bead" is the kennexion, or kenning >expression, based on the Old Norse >poetic form of the kenning, which can be >nicely translated into Lojban by >lujvo and tanru. That may be gobbledygook to most GBGers, which is why I haven't said much about Lojban on the lists so far. Suffice it to say that _lujvo_ and _tanru_, which are types of Lojban words comparable to compound nouns in English, nicely translate kennings in a completely grammatical way. I realised a few months ago as I was perusing the new Lojban reference grammar that Lojban has lujvo and tanru that are natural difrasismo too -- for example, the Lojban for "worm beetle" means "bug." Ron Hale-Evans p.s. Upcoming posts will include results of my experiments with abacus and actual coloured beads -- you *can* translate kennings into beads -- and a post about "golden-ratio kennings" and the ascending/descending metaphor distinction. BTW, some of my posts may have been coming off as a bit authoritarian. As I said, I am turning these posts into sections of my GBG book, and the voice that one adopts for a book is not quite the same as the one wants for Internet discourse, so there is sometimes a surface conflict. But everything I say is open to discussion. --R
Ron Hale-Evans
Founder, Center for Ludic Synergy
Gamemaster, Kennexions
Charter Member, Bamboo Garden of Seattle