Message-Id: <m0qRU2F-000023C@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Sat, 23 Jul 1994 09:28:27 +1000
Reply-To:     Nick NICHOLAS <nsn@VIS.MU.OZ.AU>
Sender:       Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@FINHUTC.hut.fi>
From:         Nick NICHOLAS <nsn@VIS.MU.OZ.AU>
Subject:      Re: ciska bai tu'a zo bai
To:           Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
In-Reply-To:  <199407220719.7079@krang.vis.mu.OZ.AU> from "Logical Language
              Group" at Jul 22, 94 03:17:29 am
Content-Length: 4846
Lines: 92

Hu'tegh! nuq ja' Logical Language Group jay'?

=JL> > 7.1)    ko ga'inai nenri klama le mi zdani
=JL> >         you-imperative [low-rank!] enter type-of come-to my house.
=JL> >         Honorable one, enter my unworthy house.

=This is translated correctly, though it may seem counterintuitive.
=Remember that attitudinals for the most part are expressions of the self.
="ga'inai" expresses "I am so meek" as compared to that whch it marks.

=In this case, however, Zipf may argue for a reversal of meaning for ga'i,
=since almost all examples of actual usage are of "ga'inai", and a lot more
=people have reason to be obsequious than blatantly pompous.

Ouch; major cultural presumption there. The story isn't that simple.

In fact, honorifics in language run along not one, but several axes. (NOT
that I suggest encoding these axes as distinct cmavo in Lojban, but I'd like
to point out that the story is a bit fuller than is being suggested.)

Levinson, in his influential textbook on Pragmatics (1983, Cambridge), splits
up the honorific (social deixis/ cecmu jarcyvla bo ciste) pie as follows:

relational:
        speaker & referent (referent honorific)
        speaker & addressee (addressee honorific)
        speaker & bystander (bystander honorific)
        speaker & setting (formality levels)
absolute: (eg. emperor pronouns; gender pronouns)

Japanese and Korean have distinct referent and addressee honorific levels.
Thus, you can say in Korean:

halmVnimi   o-   si- o-     b-     ni-     da
grandmother come HON HUMBLE FORMAL PRESENT DECLARATIVE
Grandmother is coming, Madam

And it's all happening there! The -si- conveys the speaker's respect to
the referent, Grandma; the -o- conveys the speaker's respect to the addressee,
Madam; and the -b- conveys the formality level. The tu/vous distinction so
common in European languagesis actually a referent honorific, since the
target has to be in the sentence to pick up the respect; *real* addressee
honorifics work even when the addressee is not grammatically involved in
the sentence --- which is why you can say the equivalent of "it honourably
rained" in Japanese.

So what of our ga'i? Oh. I've just realised I've raised the wrong point here;
Lojbab and the others are talking about what the deictic centre of {ga'i}
should be --- that is, what is the honorific relative to: does it mean
"I am honourable relative to the referent" or "the referent is honourable
relative to me". Lojbab's answer is consistent with other UI cmavo; for
the alternative, we might allow {do'a} (or whatever the empathy cmavo is
these days) to shift the deictic centre --- and, since the referents will
often be inanimate, we should take the opportunity to change its definition
to "deictic centre shift".

The reason Lojbab and John wouldn't change it to this when I first talked
of it is that attitudinals are always self-expressions, and so are always
centred on the "self"; "empathy" is something that can still be attributed
to the self, whereas "deictic centre shift" would mean that .o'onaido'a
would mean "He's angry!", not "Oh, I think he's angry" or "He must be angry".

Well, that'll generate some response from Lojban Central. The other thing
we should beware of is not to conflate addressee and referent honorifics.
What does {le patfu cu klama vauga'inai} mean? Does the father outrank me,
or does the person I'm talking to? What about {le ga'inai patfu cu klama}?
Do we in fact have a way of doing addressee honorifics as distinct from
referent honorifics?

I suspect that, due to the nature of UI cmavo, {ga'i} is a referent honorific
(so father is the outranker in the *second* example), and that the only
way to do addressee honorification is a la tu/vous, by making the addressee
grammatically part of the utterance: {doido'uga'inai le patfu cu klama}.
What the interpretation of {le patfu cu klama vauga'inai} should be is
a mystery to me. It should *not* be construed as an addressee honorific;
that's playing havoc with UI semantics (such as they are). It can only
mean... that you're honouring the sentence.

The problem is that attitudinals proper can hang off sentences because they
aren't really relational between two entities: they are centered on the
self. Honorifics don't work like that; they're not about "Oh, I feel humble"
in the same ways as "Oh, I feel happy". They honour someone specific.

So I've completely tied myself in knots. Should have gotten more sleep. John,
I do feel this should be handled in the attitudinal paper. Anyone make any
sense of this?

--
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Nick Nicholas. Linguistics, University of Melbourne.   nsn@krang.vis.mu.oz.au
        nsn@mundil.cs.mu.oz.au      nick_nicholas@muwayf.unimelb.edu.au
            AND MOVING SOON TO: nnich@speech.language.unimelb.edu.au