From lojban+bncCNf8pM-bDBCfnMDxBBoE846MnA@googlegroups.com Wed Jul 27 06:10:12 2011 Received: from mail-vw0-f61.google.com ([209.85.212.61]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1Qm3s9-000809-U2; Wed, 27 Jul 2011 06:10:09 -0700 Received: by vws2 with SMTP id 2sf853465vws.16 for ; Wed, 27 Jul 2011 06:09:55 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:received-spf:mime-version:sender:in-reply-to:references :date:message-id:subject:from:to:x-original-sender :x-original-authentication-results:reply-to:precedence:mailing-list :list-id:x-google-group-id:list-post:list-help:list-archive :list-subscribe:list-unsubscribe:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; bh=VbXQeKnAk6LdwJ3Fey11PomrV0R8rWDfyN026gqPzIk=; b=0hxwvn7Yub+wahgAxnkc/I/5Sfc5CkKxQk24IN1Ei2kNa46dk7zQ2AWGAErc7GQU2z vSgeZq1m6iF+uPhb4sFHz3G5O1WdCCY5Vw/7x1Pgw3DLJN7plPOl7LiqIM93M2JYQnpv LyvGdkfl1bzJdjbTlSQN9OO5EToFlIhB/b9kI= Received: by 10.220.210.194 with SMTP id gl2mr5774vcb.6.1311772191441; Wed, 27 Jul 2011 06:09:51 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.52.75.161 with SMTP id d1ls234045vdw.3.gmail; Wed, 27 Jul 2011 06:09:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.52.89.44 with SMTP id bl12mr6562vdb.41.1311772190631; Wed, 27 Jul 2011 06:09:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.52.89.44 with SMTP id bl12mr6561vdb.41.1311772190621; Wed, 27 Jul 2011 06:09:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail-qy0-f171.google.com (mail-qy0-f171.google.com [209.85.216.171]) by gmr-mx.google.com with ESMTPS id bv16si126173vdc.1.2011.07.27.06.09.50 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Wed, 27 Jul 2011 06:09:50 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of paskios@gmail.com designates 209.85.216.171 as permitted sender) client-ip=209.85.216.171; Received: by qyl38 with SMTP id 38so2111020qyl.9 for ; Wed, 27 Jul 2011 06:09:50 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.229.247.203 with SMTP id md11mr929qcb.268.1311772190281; Wed, 27 Jul 2011 06:09:50 -0700 (PDT) Sender: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.229.28.130 with HTTP; Wed, 27 Jul 2011 06:09:50 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <1310834449.33385.YahooMailRC@web81301.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <1310834449.33385.YahooMailRC@web81301.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 14:09:50 +0100 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: xu dai From: tijlan To: lojban@googlegroups.com X-Original-Sender: paskios@gmail.com X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of paskios@gmail.com designates 209.85.216.171 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=paskios@gmail.com; dkim=pass (test mode) header.i=@gmail.com Reply-To: lojban@googlegroups.com Precedence: list Mailing-list: list lojban@googlegroups.com; contact lojban+owners@googlegroups.com List-ID: X-Google-Group-Id: 1004133512417 List-Post: , List-Help: , List-Archive: List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 16 July 2011 17:40, John E Clifford wrote: >=A0To be sure, I can infer that you have a suggestion from the fact that y= ou actually propose one, but proposing it isn't saying that you have one, w= hich is what 'mi stidi ... ' does. I see your point. But an e'u-suggestion can state exactly what the speaker's suggestion is. It's syntactically indicated. If "e'u" comes at the beginningn of a sentence, the whole sentence represents that which I feel "I suggest" about, i.e. the content of what I intend to be a suggestion. I use a certain syntactical scope marked by "e'u" to put my suggestion in; how is that different from telling what my suggestion is by putting it in a NU clause on a certain sumti place of "stidi"? > 'mi stidi lo nu do klama' and 'e'u do klama' are not equally Informative = speech acts, since 'e'u' makes the following sentence not informative but a= suggestion, a Directive speech act. > [...] > And, of course, it is usually OK to infer from you stating 'mi stidi ...'= that you are actually making that suggestion, though 'mi stidi ...' doesn'= t actually do that. > Among the many things that hold for 'mi stidi...' is that it is true or f= alse, neither of which applies to 'e'u ...' though they may have many other= properties in common -- mostly those related to the feasibility of the sug= gestion. I don't think "e'u" or any UI1 should mark a pre-defined speech act type for the given sentence. Whether the sentence is informative / suggestive / etc. largely depends on pragmatics, contexts: A: lo vu gerku cu nitcu lo nu mi gy kurji (The dog there needs to be looked after by me.) B: .e'u do tu klama (Why don't you go there?) A: do noi bebna cu nitcu lo nu mi do kurji (You imbecile need to be looked after by me.) B: .e'u do klama lo malraistu (How about you go to hell?) Is the second "e'u" making a suggestion or informing the listener of the fact that the speaker hates to be looked after? "True or false" holds for "mi stidi ...", yes, and that's the same for "e'u ..."; the UI doesn't guarantee that the speaker is actually making that suggestion. I agree with: > But, just as one can misinform using an Informative speech act, one can s= imulate a feeling one does not have in an Expressive speech act. > The syntactical legitimacy of the form does not rely on its accuracy. I also agree with: > The function of Expressive speech acts is to express feeling and the like= . > [...] > Expressive is always the expression of the speaker's feeling And I don't think that UI1 cannot be used for other than an Expressive speech act. Imagine a town in Lojbanistan where the government plans to build a nuclear power plant. The protesting inhabitants take to the street and shout ".aunai .aunai". Would that be less Informative than "na djica .i na djica"? It may be argued even that ".aunai .aunai" could be as much Directive as Expressive. Is the accused government supposed to take ".aunai .aunai" as a purely Expressive utterance with no Directive significance or an utterance with both Expressive and Directive significances? Would the protesters fail in communicating the factual piece of information that they don't want the plant in their town, if they said nothing other than ".aunai .aunai"? This pertains to your and xorxes' later comments: On 16 July 2011 23:49, John E. Clifford wrote: > And one part of all that is to keep one grammatical distinction overt (or= at least clearly marked). > Now it would be a possible one -- but one uniting slippage, I think, to a= llow that for certain predicate in certain contexts, when unmarked, to indi= cate a different speech act from the usual one (informative). > We do it all the time in English, of course, and it creates countless pro= blems for logical analysis. > Better to stick to the simple rule, hard though it seems to be for people= to grasp or follow (why pursue a language which is supposed to change the = way you think and then changes it back so that it works like one you alread= y have?) 2011/7/17 Jorge Llamb=EDas : > But why should language be limited to serious purposes? It needs to cover= the whole gamut of purposes. For me, 'the simple rule' would be to have "e'u" & "stidi" or "au" & "djica" etc. being different by default only in their syntax and not additionally in their speech act types unless explicitly marked as some. Now, if 1) Expressive is always the expression of the speaker's feeling, BUT 2) koha can simulate with an attitudinal a feeling koha does not have, what's the point of defining attitudinals as Expressive-only? Indeed, if we did that, (1) and (2) would wind up being contradictory. Both you and I agree on (1) and (2); and what appears to be the sole arrangement for (1) and (2) to not be contradictory, is to not pre-define and limit all attitidinals to be of a particular speech act type. > I find the notion that asking a question is Expressive a little hard to f= ollow: > what is it expressing? >=A0Surely not curiosity on the part of the speaker -- or even interest; th= ere are far too many bureaucrats asking too many questions just top fill ou= t a form for that to be plausible. *Asking* a question is not only Directive, is my opinion. It can be as Expressive as Directive. It can convey as distinct an attitude to express something as an action to direct the audience to engage in something. If an utterance is Directive, should it be always non-Expressive by category? Can you direct somebody to do something without expressing your inner state of demanding that it be done? As I said, the act of questioning is the expression of the speaker's mental posture toward a propositional construct. The "what is it" attitude. And by "a mental posture" or "an attitude" I don't mean a state limited to a biological body. Any lingo-logical performer including computers in a non-closed system can theoretically have the "what is it" attitude toward a linguistic object. And when that attitude is expressed either internally or externally, a question is realized. I distinguish "asking a question" from "a question", just like "expressing an emotion" from "an emotion". Questions and emotions per se are of course not the same thing, but asking a question and expressing an emotion are both primarily a (biological or non-biological) cognitive performance, 'attitudinal', in my opinion. > The questions function is to summon up an answer (period). > Aiming to elicit an answer hardly seems in line with feeling pain or plea= sure or other central UI concepts (though perhaps related to some of the fu= nction-changing UI, which are also not Expressive, by and large). Do we ask a (real) question for the sake always of only summoning up an answer, or sometimes of also expressing our answer-seeking attitude? Would the question "xu do mi prami" be a failed utterance if I couldn't get an answer? Or would it be a successful one regardless of the response or the lack thereof, for the very fact that I would have successfully expressed what it is that I question? Like "e'u" and "aunai", I think the function or the speech act type of "xu" in its actual uses is dynamically variable, however static its syntax may be. "Aiming to elicit an answer" seems to have a sense of ".au" or ".uanai". I compare: ma klama zo'e .uanai klama do xu klama do .uanai klama These are analogous if not entirely identical. The main difference is that "ma" and "xu" explicitly expect of the audience to return a syntactically corresponding solution, which "uanai" doesn't. "xu" is used in aiming to elicit an answer, yes; used by what? The utterer. The same origin as of "uanai". Whenever "xu" is used, an aspect of the utterer is indicated, in addition to the fact that an answer is expected to be presented. I consider that Expressive, in addition to Directive. >=A0But 'dai' allows that I may feel something akin to what someone else fe= els when presented with the other person's expressions of their feeling. >=A0Of course, I may also feel something quite different (maybe at the same= time): hatred, jealousy, sympathy and so on. Would you say the following parenthetical remarks make sense? xu broda to mi teryrei lo jei broda toi xu dai broda to mi sruma lo du'u na'e mi teryrei lo jei broda toi I think they do. If I'm asked what the meaning of "xu dai" might be, I could say "mi sruma lo du'u na'e mi teryrei lo jei ...". --=20 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "= lojban" group. To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegrou= ps.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban= ?hl=3Den.