From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sat Mar 6 22:50:55 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI Received: (qmail 4218 invoked from network); 10 Mar 1997 21:26:19 -0000 Received: from segate.sunet.se (192.36.125.6) by xiron.pc.helsinki.fi with SMTP; 10 Mar 1997 21:26:19 -0000 Received: from segate.sunet.se by SEGATE.SUNET.SE (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <9.89F3D823@SEGATE.SUNET.SE>; Mon, 10 Mar 1997 22:26:19 +0100 Date: Mon, 10 Mar 1997 14:57:55 -0500 Reply-To: lojbab Sender: Lojban list From: John Cowan Organization: Lojban Peripheral Subject: Re: Lojban attitudinals X-To: Langdev List To: Veijo Vilva Content-Length: 4932 Lines: 94 Message-ID: Lojbab sent me the following, and asked me to forward it. John Cowan wrote: >Claudio Gnoli wrote: >> The only thing which makes me perplexed is that when one is expressing >> emotions, his exclamations are quite spontaneous and sudden, so that >> having to *compound* appropriate words, like , could >> be unnatural. is less accurate, but simpler. >> >> Is there any experience of actual use of compound attitudinals >> in spoken Lojban? > >One tends to invent them only once, and then remember the compound >as a single unit. I no longer think of "o'onai" as a compound; >it's simply the Lojbanic way of expressing anger, like "Grrrrrr!" >in English. > >Likewise, "e'osai" from my signature just means "*Please*" (but >not "*Please*, *please*, pretty please" which would be "e'ocai"). I agree with John, but want to amplify. there are really several kinds of attitudinal compounds in Lojban. Compounds formed by taking a simple attitudinal, and adding an indication of intensity (e'osai = e'o/petition + sai/strong emotion) are for me totally spontaneous - I express the emotion and then I express the intensity. Compounds formed by a simple attitudinal+ "nai" or "cu'i" for the most part are simply memorized and internalized as new "simple forms". You can analytically recognize o'onai as a scalar negation (opposite) of o'o (patience) with "o'ocu'i" being "mere toleration", but such analysis requires that you consciously buy into that particular scale of attitude, which is not necessary if you memorize the nai varieties as independent simple forms that can be intensity-specified. You can similarly learn the cu'i forms as neutral simple forms with no intensity specifiable; the fact that the word is on a scale serves to define it (o'ocu'i then is a neutral, openly-expressed, emotion in between openly expressed patience and openly expressed anger). To the extent you have memorized these, they tend to come out spontaneously. But other compounds exist. These occur when you wish to express an emotion for which you know no simple Lojban attitudinal. In most cases these come in two forms. In one case, I feel and wish to express an emotion, but feel constrained by circumstances and context - I feel at a basic level that the simple form isn't quite right or is misleading. For example, I feel the physical symptoms of fear at a gut level, but am not really "scared", so I might express "ii" fear + "ro'o" physical, and sometimes adding in "ro'enai" (non-mental). For the most part, I have not memorized compounds of basic attitudes with a ro'V classifier, but express them compoundedly almost as spontaneously as the attitudinal+intensity marker described above. Then fially there are the emotions you feel for which you just don't know a simple Lojban word for, and for which one of the above compounding methods doesn't satisfy. These take time and cogitation for me, but not necessarily for a long time. An example I can easily envision needing sometime might be "appreciation+neutral-approval" for the emotion we describe in English with "I appreciate the thought but...". This is not one I would memorize or internalize (at least I haven't and probably won't in the near future), but suspect that I would do so iff I used it a lot. The process of doing so, and of you understanding me when I do so, seems like the kind of productive expression in English associated with using a noun as a verb. I doubt if such usages happen spontaneously the first time, but rather someone gropes for a word, uses it not necessarily correctly, and finds that it is understood. Thereafter, the usage by that person and others of, say, "impact" as a verb, is pretty much spontaneous. In Lojban we have designed this kind of productivity into the language, and in the case of attitudinals there are zillions of possible compounds that will be used only with conscious thought at first, but could be internalized as unitary concepts given the right circumstances. Indeed, having described it that way, this is identical to the process by which we expect people will learn standard content-word compounds in Lojban. At first, you are careful and analytical about both the wordform and its semantics. But eventually the compound becomes internalized so that you never think of its components at all. This has happened to me with "e'osai" and "o'onai" in the attitudinals, and with brivla, selbri (both Lojban gramatical terms) and bavlamdei (=tomorrow) among content-words. ---- lojbab lojbab@access.digex.net Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: ftp.access.digex.net /pub/access/lojbab or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/"