| In a message dated 7/31/2001 9:44:58 AM Central Daylight Time,
xod@sixgirls.org writes: All of us were stumbling along with a literary style of Lojban, While I am sure that xod is right about the excess of attitudinal predicates in speech, I wish to offer a two-fold warning. First, this does NOT mean that attitudinal cmavo mean the same as various brivla. That is, the better sentences xod envisions will say something different from the prolix ones he regrets. On the other hand, the shorter, simpler, ones will usually come closer to saying what speaker intended than the more elaborate ones used. Secondly, this does not mean that the actually used forms were malglico just because they follow the English form rather than the English sense (as they do) but that English form is ambiguous and the usage results from following the wrong sense of the form. So, as usual, use English with caution and understand it before translating it (and before incorporating that translation into your Lojban idiolect). In fact, we are much more inclined to talk about what we opine, etc., than about the fact that we opine it, and thus use attitudinals for these attitudes much more often than brivla. English just happens to the same form for both in many cases. |