Return-Path: Message-Id: Date: Fri, 5 Apr 91 05:57 EST From: lojbab (Bob LeChevalier) To: lojban-list Subject: response to Carter on freemods Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Fri Apr 5 05:58:39 1991 X-From-Space-Address: lojbab Re Jim Carter's comment: on the grammar and range of free modifiers. These were never considered the equivalent of sumti becuase they inherently modify the previous structure (except at the beginning of the sentence). They are thus more like the attitudinals, which we keep distninct and grammar free - more on this in a moment. Free modifiers include subscripts, and there are innumerable reasons in Lojban to use subscripts metalinguistically in ways that a sumti attachment would simply not support. The grammatical free modfiers are those with sufficiently complex grammar to require parsing, and hence cannot be totally free, but we remove as many constraints as possible (Loglan IS about removing unneeded constraints). On the whole, though, Jim will find these grammatical freemods to be not all that unlike sumti in their grammatical location - but they group differently in the sentence than sumti. Attitudinals are intended to be grammar free expressions because for the most part they are intended to be at the subliminal level. Like the hesitation noise, .y. and the English "you know" (Lojban pei?), these are to be stuck in where they fit, where you feel the intuitive need to. Unlike Carter, we do not feel these are abbreviations for claims; they are expressions. They are the equivalent of tone of voice, which in English and most other languages is controlled down to the word level or even more refined. (The Joy of Yiddish starts of with a sentence with contrastive stress applied in something like a dozen different places in the sentence to get different semantic interpretations of the sentence. EACH Lojban attitudinal has that power. Try an experiment. Take any short Lojban sentence that you can understand the grammar of. Take say 3 or 4 different attitudinals expressing a variety of emotions. For each attitudinal, and for each word position, insert the attitudinal and try to figure out what it means. Here try: mi dunda ti do I give this to-you. with attitudinals chosen from .iu (love) .oi (complaint) .ui (happiness) .uu (pity) .u'u (regret) .ue (surprise) .auro'u (sexual desire) For each attitudinal, there are five positions. Lets see some people post their interpretations of one or two attitudinals. A brave soul can try two attitudinals in different places in the sentence, also permitted. e.g. .ui mi dunda ti do Happily, I give this to you. mi .ui dunda ti do I'm so happy it was ME who gave this to you. mi dunda .ui ti do I'm GIVING this to you, and happily (Did you think I could charge you for it?) mi dunda ti .ui do I'm giving THIS (my dream gift for you) to you. mi dunda ti do .ui I'm giving this to YOU (who makes me so happy) Now of course in THIS sentence, all positions correspond to places you could add a tagged sumti, but it is trivial to change the sentence into one where this isn't so: mi dunda le xunre cukta do, where any attitudinal on xunre would violate jimc's constraint. (But I WANT to say how much I LOVE the color red when I tell you about my gift. Who are you to tell me I'm not allowed to do so?) Post your own examples, people (Come on PEOPLE, this one HAS to be easy enough for EVERYBODY. You can write an original Lojban expression, completely grammatical and meaningful, in 15 seconds? And you need no textbook, dictionary or parser - indeed the latter would tell you nothing new) lojbab