[lojban-beginners] attitudinals, was Re: zo .e'e

[mungojelly@ixkey.info]

Quoting Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:

> That's one way of putting it. I would say that whereas the bridi
> provides the propositional content of the utterance, the attitudinal
> is used to show what the speaker does with it. Making an assertion,
> asserting it, is perhaps the most obvious thing one can do with a
> bridi, but of course it is not the only possibility.


Yes, thank you, that's just what I've been thinking,
expressed very clearly.

To me it still seems easier with some cmavo than others.
It seems very clear to me for instance how the ".ia" scale
effects the speakers action, for instance.  If they use the
positive end of the ".ia" scale, the speaker is speaking the
bridi and also saying that they believe the bridi is true.
If they use the negative end of the scale, ".ianai", they are
speaking the bridi and also saying that they believe that it's
false.  The expression of the sentence is differently colored,
by relating it to the speaker's faithful understanding of the
world.

The ".ui" scale feels a little more difficult for me to
fully grok.  There's something very new in the Lojbanicness
of it.  I'm used to the idea of expressing a sentence as
believed or not-believed, but in my intuition from English
it's more *speakers* that are happy/sad.  My Lojbanic logic
and intuition, though, say that the ".ui" scale is not just
a verbal smile or verbal smiley, but exactly parallel to
the ".ia" scale in the way it adjusts the bridi's
relationship.  It's not whether the speaker is happy at
the moment, or whether they're happy about what they're
saying, it's whether the bridi is connected to the body of
things that make the speaker happy.  In Lojban as well as
having a body of beliefs (selkrici), a person has a body of
happiness-producing-things (selgleki).


> Or at least more transparent. "za'a do klama" tells me how the speaker
> knows of your going, but not whether they are happy about it. "za'a .ui
> do klama" tells me how they know and that they are happy, but not
> whether they are surprized, and so on.


I've begun to think of it as a swarming interwoven sea of
implication underlying every expression.  Context shapes
our understanding of an expression, and the attitudinals
also reach in to grab particular strings in the net.

For instance, if you grab the ".a'o" string, the closely-
connected ".au" string will tend to be dragged along.  If
you wanted to contradict that assumption you'd need to say
".a'o.aunai", an imaginable but unusual perspective.


> So {ei} fits more with {au} or {a'o}.


In trying to put together a pedagogy for Cniglic, I've been
pondering how to group & order the scales to teach them.
So far what I've come up with is the seven sets .iX, .uX,
& .X'X, leaving the four oddballs .ai, .ei, .au and .oi.
There seems to be some organization in terms of the
.a'-series, the .e'-series, etc, and I also thought it
might have mnenomic value if the groups shared sounds.

Does that make any sense?  How would you (doi ro tcidu)
organize the 39 scales into smaller sets to teach
together?


mu'o mi'e la mungodjelis. no'u la bret.