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Re: [lojban] An approach to attitudinals
At 05:05 PM 06/12/2001 -0700, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
Here's an extension that I think I like:
1. In a sentence by itself, UI is a bare emotion.
2. At the front of a sentence, UI modifies the assertive nature of the
whole bridi.
3. After a particular sumti, UI modifies the assertive nature of the
element, but leaves the assertive nature of the bridi alone.
4. After the brivla, UI does not modify the assertive nature at all.
Note that #2 contravenes the book.
This ignores other places that a UI can appear.
The correct generalization is that UI reflects the speaker's attitude when
contemplating that element of language that the UI attaches to, with the
scope of the attitudinal determined by the scope of the language
element. At the beginning of the sentence, attached to ".i" the scope is
the entire sentence and the speaker is reacting to that sentence (but if
attached to ni'o refers to an entire paragraph). At the end of a sentence,
attached to a final vau, the scope is the same. In a sentence by itself
within a longer text stream, the expression is "point in time" and doesn't
associate with any particular bit of text, but thus in effect ambiguously
refers to any or all preceding text and/or all following text assuming that
one or the other is stimulating the emotive response.
I see no reason for this "modifying the assertive nature" language. What
seems to be the case is that it is pragmatics and not grammar that
determines whether an attitudinal has propositional effect, with the
pragmatics being specific to the particular emotion and when/how it is
usually felt; I think we should leave it at that.
lojbab
--
lojbab lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org