Date: Sun, 17 Sep 1995 00:28:56 +0100
From: ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Subject: backchannels
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
To: Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Reply-to: ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Message-id: <01HVD7I6RTK2000GNL@FIPORT.FUNET.FI>
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Length: 1323
Lines: 33

Jorge:
> > la djan spuda la and di'e
> > > On the same topic, what would you use for a backchannel, like "right,
> > > yeah, mhm" etc.? (I.e. stuff the addressee says while the speaker's
> > > talking.)
 
So far I'm happiest with {.a'a}. Ije loi dahi nu koa mi se bacru kei
mi se xarkae.
 
> > > Nothing in COI seems an obvious choice. {je'e} seems
> > > the best, but my cmaste says it has a specialized usage of
> > > acknowledgement, which is different from backchanneling.
> > "je'e" is indeed the Right Thing; it specifically "acknowledges the
> > successful reception of a communcation" (the attitudinal paper).
> > What do you understand by "acknowledgement" other than this?
> The cmavo list says:
> je'e      COI     roger     vocative: roger (ack) - negative acknowledge;
> used to acknowledge offers and thanks
 
I thought that description implies it's like a "thank you:you're welcome"/
"danke:bitte"/"grazie:prego" response. This is, as Jorge says, not the
same thing as a mhm/uhuh backchannel:
 
> Also, it would be nice to have a more gracious way of replying
> to "thank you" than "mhm". Of course, it has to be somewhat
> idiomatic, but I still haven't found a nice way to do it.
 
Well, we could use {je'e} in the cmaste sense, and for backchannels
use {aa} or another UI that fits the context.
 
---
And