| In a message dated 7/5/2001 8:29:43 PM Central Daylight Time,
a.rosta@dtn.ntl.com writes: <The key point I wanted to make is that "p" is simply a proposition/state-of- affairs, not an assertion (tho it may be griceanly understood as an assertion).> No, it is a complete uttered bridi, neither a proposition nor a state of affairs (though it means one and refers to the other). This is pre-Grice, since the fact that it is uttered is crucial (and all the bit about seriously meaning to communicate and whatever). <AFAICS, expressing an emotion of happiness about a proposition/soa does not entail that the p/soa is the case, and the belief that it does entail that the p/soa is the case is a malglico carryover from "to be happy that p" (& cf. "to be happy for X to do Y", which doesn't entail X has done Y).> Note that p is not a complete sentence in either of these last two cases, so we are into another problem -- about entailments from subordinate clauses and the like (cf. "know" of considerable infamy). Surely the way to I think that the assumption in the Book -- and in the history of Lojban/Loglan has always been that bridi assertions are primary and that deviations from that required a mark, but that assertions did not. Now, given my own inclination toward sorting out various uses of language and dealing with them separately, I suppose I should reconsider this. But it is certainly not yet the case that assertions need marks. In particular, UI on a sentence begins life as a simple decorations -- emotive responses to something, with the first suggestion as to what being the sentence to which they are grammatically attached, if any. And a large set of these emotions can be viewed as responses to the situation presented in the sentence on the assumption that that situation actually obtains. This is less a malglico than a mal-human-language, if it is mal-anything, rather than inherent in the ejaculative pattern in langage [sic]. Other "emotions" (I am not sure that this is the right word for these) equally require that the events responded to be uncertain, even known not to hold, even known impossible, perhaps. Yet in Lojban they have (for now, anyhow) the same grammar as those that only apply to the occurrent. (Don't bother, by the way, scouring the threads for the various proposals about how to solve this matter -- there is no consensus yet and the bases of the proposals are alaid out adequately in the sketch, though you have added two more possibilities that were not in the list: response to the proposition in absttaction (or generalization) or a causal connection. The placement possibilities are initial, pre- and post-selbri and final and maybe a variety of special hooks. Frankly I like your separation pattern better, but none of them much compared to the present "system" (the lack of system being its major flaw). <The contraries of these hypotheses are also hypotheses. It scarcely needs to be pointed out that any rational analysis of attitudinals (or whatever) must be founded on some hypothesis.> While established practice does not quite constitute a theory, it does make a starting place for an analysis and that is the line I am following, for the most part. Although, analyzing attitudinals does not require any particular theory as such at the beginning, since it seems first to be merely getting lists and classifying (oh, right! classification requires the notion that some things are more important than others and so a theory -- but here we have what has come up in discussion as a guide). <> Again, while something like your unpacking of "hope" or {a'o} has been > suggested, it has been countered by a number of cases of thinks hoped for but > not pleasure generating and conversely. But note that I said "desirable", not "pleasure generating".> Which means you have to unpack that notion a bit (who, when, why, where, how?) -- not that "pleasure generating" is exactly clear. But it seems possible to hope for something quite undesirable (unless you mean ala Mill that someone desires it) and, of course, there are many desirable things (even known to be such) that no one hopes for. "The not known not to be" condition seems required for "hope" and, I should say, {a'o} and {pacna} as well (see the comments sections in the relevant word lists). |