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[lojban-beginners] Re: zo .e'e
Quoting Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
I would put it as "showing an attitude of encouragement or exhortation",
rather than "feeling" anything, just as I wouldn't say {e'a} is a feeling of
permissiveness, or {e'u} a feeling of suggestiveness, or {e'o} a
"feeling of request".
Attitudinals often can be used to express feelings, but then again
it is not always feelings that they express.
Thanks, what you said has helped me think about it.
This is how it seems to me at the moment: A bridi expresses a
relationship between its arguments. Attaching attitudinals to the
bridi also orients that bridi relative to the speaker. "do klama" is
a bridi about you going, but the attitudinals give that relationship a
connection to the speaker and the act of speaking: "do klama za'a"
makes it explicitly an observation of the world, and "do klama .a'o"
makes it something the speaker hopes for. We understand every
statement to have an implicit relationship with its speaker-- we
assume there's some reason it's being said-- but the attitudinals make
the relationship between an expression and its speaker transparent.
In my understanding, {ei} is used to indicate not anyone's obligation,
but how the speaker feels things ought to be. For example:
ei lo forca cu pritu lo palta
The fork ought to go to the right of the plate.
That's obviously not an oblgation of the fork, nor directly of any person.
But when there is an agent involved, expressing how things ought to
be is very close to expressing an obigation of the agent:
ei la djan klama le zarci
It ought to be the case that John goes to the market.
John ought to go to the market.
In the .e'X series it seems we're talking about the speaker's attitude
towards something happening: They give permission for it to happen, or
request for it to happen, or obligate that it happen. Does zo .ei
have less of this sense of being the speaker's decision, and more of a
general sense that something should/ought/must happen for some reason?
I undestand "e'i", in the light of the e-series roughly corresponding
to the imperative mood, as imposing an obligation:
e'i la djan klama le zarci
Let John go to the market.
(Not "let" in the sense of "allow", but English is not very good with third
person imperatives.)
So the speaker is the one who is giving permission, encouraging,
requesting something, etc. Is it the addressee they're giving the
permission (etc) to? Or is it whoever is doing or would be doing the
action (the gasnu) or whoever's responsible for the action (the fuzme)?
I think it seems like these are imperative in the sense that they say
something must or may or should be done, but they don't necessarily
start to suggest that the adressee ought to be the one to do them,
until there's at least a "do" in the bridi & probably a "ko". Is that
right?
So:
e'a: grant permission
Someone wants to do the thing, and the speaker is giving their assent:
Yes, that is OK with me.
e'e: give encouragement
Someone is trying to do the thing, and the speaker wants them to do it
and thinks they can succeed.
e'i: impose an obligation
The speaker is saying that someone is obligated to do the thing.
e'o: pose a request
The thing would benefit the speaker, so the speaker is asking someone
to do it for them.
e'u: offer a suggestion
The speaker thinks that the thing would be beneficial to someone if
that person did it, so they're recommending it.
.iepei
mu'o mi'e la mundodjelis. no'u la bret.