[lojban-beginners] Re: ok, lambda/currying-geeks needed (was Re: Re: "Once More")

[Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>]

On Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 08:24:38PM +0100, Sunnan wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-12-14 at 15:53 -0300, Jorge Llamb??as wrote:
> > On 12/14/05, Sunnan <sunnan@handgranat.org> wrote:
> > > BTW, xorxes, are su'i and vu'u what Haskell programmers would
> > > call "curried"?
> > 
> > What would you do with them if they were? {li su'i pa} is
> > grammatical, but I would take it to be just {li pa}. I don't
> > remember this ever being dealt with however.
> 
> Robin suggests: "Not if you want to use it in front of tenses.
> The idea would be to have PA that mean "plus one" and "minus one",
> analogous to da'a or za'u, with the current value as the default."
> 
> Maybe these tense-prefixing PA could be constructed from su'i pa
> with the proper currying/lambda-wrapping method?

No.  Believe me, I've tried.  There is no way at all to stick VU'U
in front of ROI, no matter how you wrap it.

I could, of course, be wrong.

> I do totally dislike Lojbans attitudinal system[1]
[snip]

Interesting.  That's one of my favorite parts of the language.

> [1]:
> One problem with the attitudinal system is that it's based on opposing
> axes, like love being an opposite of hate.

Nah; that's just an excuse to squeeze more meanings out of limited
cmavo space using nai.

> Another is that it's constructed from a list of English emotions
> -- one of the first things I wanted to write/say was an
> attitudinal to replace "the tone of voice you have when revealing
> a great secret", and of course, non exists. I've seen complaints
> by others that there's also no simple attitudinal for non-English
> concepts like shadenfreude or ennui and I agree with this problem.

Adding more is certainly possible.  Having said that, however,
you're talking about *incredibly* complex emotional states.  Hardly
the things one uses intejections for.  Are there interjections in
German or French for these emotions?  I doubt it.

Having said all that:

"the tone of voice you have when revealing a great secret" isn't an
emotion, of course, but I think you're looking for something like
"ti'e vu'e nai .u'e"

Schadenfreude is ".ui nai dai .ui" or "le'o .ui", possibly with vu'e
nai thrown in.

Ennui is (obviously) ".u'i nai"

> It's so limited, static, frozen. 

That's what experimental cmavo space is for.

> Here's more:
> Nausea, 

Nausea is *NOT* an emotion.

Having said that, again, ".a'u nai ro'o" or ".au nai ro'o" both fit
pretty well.

> isolation (scratch this one, I guess o'enai does the job),

Yep.

> suspicion, 

That's just .ii

> jealousy, 

.i'o nai

> righteousness, 

vu'e

> and more?

This is a fun game.  Why stop now?

> Some of these may exist but it's not an easy system to find my way
> around, 

That's something the BPFK is trying to work on.

> it's more like a static list of emotions coupled with negations
> and (somewhat arbitrary) oppositions.

The scales and oppositions are just to squeeze more juice out of
cmavo space, as I said.

> Thirdly, and related to both preceding problems -- it's so
> distinct from regular lojban, it feels like it's painted on or
> glued on. It's not based on gismu or selbri or anything else.

Erm.

I don't know what to say about this, except that it makes no sense
to me at all.

I think you may miss the point of the UI cmavo: the point of them is
*not* to make complex, analytical statements about emotion.  The
point is to have noises that are built into your brain as "the sound
I make to express an internal emotional state", like "ow" in
English, and to have lots of them, and to have them appear in
dictionaries.

If you're thinking about attitudinals before you say them, you're
using them incorrectly.  This, unfortunately, includes basically
everyone, AFAIK.

-Robin

-- 
http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** http://www.lojban.org/
Reason #237 To Learn Lojban: "Homonyms: Their Grate!"
Proud Supporter of the Singularity Institute - http://singinst.org/