From richardt@flash.net Sun Jun 10 11:47:53 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: richardt@flash.net X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_1_3); 10 Jun 2001 18:47:52 -0000 Received: (qmail 87939 invoked from network); 10 Jun 2001 18:47:52 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by l9.egroups.com with QMQP; 10 Jun 2001 18:47:52 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO pimout3-int.prodigy.net) (207.115.63.102) by mta1 with SMTP; 10 Jun 2001 18:47:52 -0000 Received: from flash.net ([216.51.101.193]) by pimout3-int.prodigy.net (8.11.0/8.11.0) with ESMTP id f5AIlng58826; Sun, 10 Jun 2001 14:47:49 -0400 Sender: richardt@pimout3-int.prodigy.net Message-ID: <3B23B031.CDC2FC2A@flash.net> Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 12:36:49 -0500 X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.16-22smp i686) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Jorge Llambias Cc: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] An approach to attitudinals References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Richard Todd X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 7736 Jorge Llambias wrote: > Saying {ui le truralju cu stace} does not affect the assertive > force of the bare bridi, but {a'o}, {e'o} or {xu} do. With these, > the proposition is no longer used to make an assertion. Its truth > value is not affected, but now the speaker is not claiming to know > what that truth value is. I see how you can get at the most useful versions of various attitudinals by defaulting them on an ad-hoc basis to one form or the other. I don't see why this is logical, desireable, or culturaly neutral. What is the justification for {a'o} affecting the assertive force of a bridi, while {ui} does not? From other responses (both public and private), I get the impression that not everyone agrees with your either/or stance. Some feel that all could be either depending on context, which I agree is workable but not anywhere close to ideal. I wish we could just be explicit about the effect of the attitudinal on the truth value of the sentence it's attached to. Then there'd be less confusion and more possible shades of meaning. Everyone wins. It bothers me that the only completely safe interpretation of: .a'o do dunda le karce mi is {hope emotion} associated in an unspecified way with {you give me a car}, which may or not be true depending on the nature of the association. With a suffix, there's still context involved, but at least you know up front whether the speaker is asserting a true statement. This could go a long way towards clarity. Using the placement of the attitudinal, as I've seen suggested, would force us to pick a word to which to attach a truth-altering attitudinal. That keeps the placement from doing what it's intended to do, which is emphasize that the emotion has more to do with that word than the whole sentence. Despite that objection, I do like the idea it better than leaving things alone. In my mind, this part of the language has a bug and we should fix it. > >Then, when someone misunderstands me, I can point to the > >list and say, "Nope, attitudinal number 206 doesn't do that. Study > >harder." > > Is that what you do when someone doesn't understand that a bridi > marked with {xu} is not an assertion of the bridi? The effect > of {a'o} is similar to the effect of {xu}. When I think of {xu} I don't classify it with the attitudinals. In my mind it's: {ma}=provide a sumpti, {mo}=provide a brivla, {xu}=provide the truth value. (the goal of all of these being to come up with a true assertion) So I don't know what the answer to your question is. If it is an attitudinal, then I admit the non-propositional sense of it would be a bit of a stretch. > >ko'a: .au mi na speni do > > > >ko'e: .o'onaisai ba'e mi cliva .i mi birti > > le du'u mi speni do > > What did ko'e understand? Apparently not the wish that ko'a tried > to express (which would have been a good reason for ko'e to > get angry). Did ko'e get angry just because (according to ko'e) > ko'a asserted a false proposition? It was just a silly exaggeration of what I was getting at, where {ko'a} always assumes the propositional form, and {ko'e} always assumes that a sentence is an assertion. So, yeah, that's why {ko'e} is angry; he's fed up with {ko'a} constantly spouting what he believe to be nonsense/lies. In {ko'e}'s mind, {ko'a} says: Consistent with my hopes, I'm leaving. Just as I desire, it is not true that we are married. To {ko'a}, it's more like: I hope I will leave. I wish it weren't true that we're married. I think I've made my point the best I can make it. I'm not trying to start an argument. All in all, so far I think lojban is a very enjoyable language to learn. Perhaps someone else will think of a better resolution. I do think we need some sort of 'ruling' on these things, which will be written down and accessible. Perhaps updating the reference grammar would be a good idea, or a bug-tracking database (like is used in software). Richard