From rob@twcny.rr.com Wed Jun 13 15:43:25 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: rob@twcny.rr.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_1_3); 13 Jun 2001 22:43:24 -0000 Received: (qmail 22900 invoked from network); 13 Jun 2001 22:43:24 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l7.egroups.com with QMQP; 13 Jun 2001 22:43:24 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mailout1.nyroc.rr.com) (24.92.226.81) by mta2 with SMTP; 13 Jun 2001 22:43:24 -0000 Received: from mail1.twcny.rr.com (mail1-1.nyroc.rr.com [24.92.226.139]) by mailout1.nyroc.rr.com (8.11.2/RoadRunner 1.03) with ESMTP id f5DMfxf04468 for ; Wed, 13 Jun 2001 18:41:59 -0400 (EDT) Received: from riff ([24.95.175.101]) by mail1.twcny.rr.com (Post.Office MTA v3.5.3 release 223 ID# 0-59787U250000L250000S0V35) with ESMTP id com for ; Wed, 13 Jun 2001 18:41:57 -0400 Received: from rob by riff with local (Exim 3.22 #1 (Debian)) id 15AJI7-0000Hr-00 for ; Wed, 13 Jun 2001 18:39:11 -0400 Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2001 18:39:11 -0400 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis Message-ID: <20010613183911.A1015@twcny.rr.com> Reply-To: rob@twcny.rr.com References: <4.3.2.7.2.20010613104438.00dca3d0@127.0.0.1> <4.3.2.7.2.20010613161728.00a9ff00@127.0.0.1> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20010613161728.00a9ff00@127.0.0.1> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.18i X-Is-It-Not-Nifty: www.sluggy.com From: Rob Speer X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 7944 On Wed, Jun 13, 2001 at 04:58:27PM -0400, Bob LeChevalier (lojbab) wrote: > I am pretty sure that .ui ko'a klama is NOT mi gleki lenu ko'a klama. It > is closer to mi pe sekai leka mi gleki cu cinmo zo'e lenu ko'a klama. I > feel some emotion about ko'as going, and I am characterized by some aspect > of being happy as part of that feeling, but I resist even that much > commitment to a bridi claim about my emotions. So I've been shot down by Lojbab. In an official rant, no less. Sucks to be me. However, it seems that I still need to be more clear about the point I'm trying to make. Certainly it is bad to assume that {.ui ko'a klama} means the same as {mi gleki lenu ko'a klama}. But it is worse to say it means "I would be happy if ko'a klama", because the added conditional part comes from expressing it in English. My list of bridi corresponding to attitudinals was not meant to change anything. It was meant to make a point. I was fairly convinced that with Robin's proposal (and without his needless pessimism about it) we were getting fairly close to an understanding of attitudinals which neither contradicts the Book nor actual usage of Lojban. I realize that my original proposal (which started off this part of the thread) was flawed and _did_ contradict the Book, but I'm not talkang about that one anymore. The book's third example in the chapter about attitudinals is: {.a'o la djan. klama}, which it translates as [Hopefully] John is coming. This is different from the other ones where it says [Wow!] John is coming, or [Whee!] John is coming. My list of bridi that corresponded to attitudinals was an attempt to explain why it has a different effect - because if you express it in Lojban, the effect isn't different after all. The book explains this in English by dividing the attitudinals into categories. This is one part that other people were trying to needlessly "fix" with their proposals - however, these categories simply exist to make the concepts easier to understand in English. Let me repeat Robin's proposal which I liked, for the sake of discussion: > 1. In a sentence by itself, UI is a bare emotion. > 2. At the front of a sentence, UI modifies the assertive nature of the > whole bridi. > 3. After a particular sumti, UI modifies the assertive nature of the > element, but leaves the assertive nature of the bridi alone. > 4. After the brivla, UI does not modify the assertive nature at all. So, if you take my interpretation of Robin's proposal, part 2, and rephrase it, you get: 2. Leave the attitudinals at the beginning of the sentence exactly as the Book describes them. Good enough? The part I wished to focus on was what the attitudinals do in other places. The Book doesn't explicitly mention attitudinals in their own sentence, but there seems to be a general consensus that they must express a pure emotion. So 1 is okay. The examples in the Book seem to show that attitudinals placed later in the sentence do not change the assertive nature of the sentence. Robin's #3 extends the meaning of this to make it worth putting the attitudinal there anyway. The examples in the Book in section 8 seem to support this. The Book appears to say nothing about what an attitudinal does after the brivla. Robin's #4 deals with that in the safest way - it remains an emotion which is in some way attached to the brivla and does not modify the assertive nature of the sentence. So, now we have a proposal which contradicts neither the Book nor usage in Lojban, and which allows for both attitudinals which modify an assertion and attitudinals which don't. What more could we need? -- Rob Speer