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Date:         Tue, 3 Aug 1993 10:27:51 +1000
Reply-To: Nick Nicholas <nsn@MULLIAN.EE.MU.OZ.AU>
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From: Nick Nicholas <nsn@MULLIAN.EE.MU.OZ.AU>
Subject:      TECH: A pragmatics sampler
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To: Erik Rauch <erikr@MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU>
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Message-ID: <We8pnsUr06P.A.HfH.sy0kLB@chain.digitalkingdom.org>

Adding to my pragmatics concerns, I'll post here some phrases from my Prag.
course, and ask how they are translated in Lojban.

                Relativisation of deixis and complex deixis:

                                Temporal deixis:

The tense of the narrated event may be characterised absolutely --- with
reference to the tense of the speech event; alternatively, it may be
characterised relatively, with reference to the tense of the reporting event.

"I asked him why his hands were trembling"

Speech event: "I am now talking"
Reporting event: "I asked him"
Narrated event: "His hands were trembling"

In English, the narrated event occurs before the speech event, so it is past
tense. In Russian (and Esperanto), it is simulataneous with the reporting
event, so it is in the present.

mi ki terpreti fo ke'a fo lu ledo xance ca se desku ki'u ma li'u

mi ki terpreti fo ke'a fe lesedu'u leke'a xance ca/pu? se desku ki'u dakau

Which is correct for Lojban?

                                Personal deixis:

The person of the narrated event may be characterised absolutely:

I asked him "Why are *your* hands trembling"

or relatively:

I asked him why *his* hands are trembling.

Lojban operates like English.

                                Epistemic deixis.

Not in my notes, but quite important in Lojban.

ko'a djuno ledu'u dakau catra

When {kau} was invented, I insisted the deixis is relativised, that ko'a
knows the murderer. Lojbab argued it was absolute, like all other UI:
the phrase asserts that *I*, not ko'a, knows the murderer; and that, at
most, se'i/se'inai could be used to change epistemic deixis from absolute
to relativised (in English: to change UI from referring to the speaker to
refering to who you're talking about, who says the ledu'u).

And I'm just wondering whether we want some uniform mechanism, at this
late stage, to handle deixis relativisation.

*******************************************************************************
 A freshman once observed to me:         Nick Nicholas am I, of Melbourne, Oz.
 On the edge of the Rubicon,             nsn@munagin.ee.mu.oz.au (IRC: nicxjo)
 men don't go fishing.                   CogSci and CompSci & wannabe Linguist.
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