Re: [lojban] Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

[Rob Speer <rob@twcny.rr.com>]

On Wed, Jun 13, 2001 at 04:58:27PM -0400, Bob LeChevalier (lojbab) wrote:
> I am pretty sure that .ui ko'a klama is NOT mi gleki lenu ko'a klama.  It 
> is closer to mi pe sekai leka mi gleki cu cinmo zo'e lenu ko'a klama.  I 
> feel some emotion about ko'as going, and I am characterized by some aspect 
> of being happy as part of that feeling, but I resist even that much 
> commitment to a bridi claim about my emotions.

So I've been shot down by Lojbab. In an official rant, no less. Sucks to be me.

However, it seems that I still need to be more clear about the point I'm trying
to make. Certainly it is bad to assume that {.ui ko'a klama} means the same as
{mi gleki lenu ko'a klama}. But it is worse to say it means "I would be happy
if ko'a klama", because the added conditional part comes from expressing it in
English.

My list of bridi corresponding to attitudinals was not meant to change
anything. It was meant to make a point.

I was fairly convinced that with Robin's proposal (and without his needless
pessimism about it) we were getting fairly close to an understanding of
attitudinals which neither contradicts the Book nor actual usage of Lojban.
I realize that my original proposal (which started off this part of the thread)
was flawed and _did_ contradict the Book, but I'm not talkang about that one
anymore.

The book's third example in the chapter about attitudinals is: {.a'o la djan.
klama}, which it translates as [Hopefully] John is coming. This is different
from the other ones where it says [Wow!] John is coming, or [Whee!] John is
coming. My list of bridi that corresponded to attitudinals was an attempt to
explain why it has a different effect - because if you express it in Lojban,
the effect isn't different after all.

The book explains this in English by dividing the attitudinals into categories.
This is one part that other people were trying to needlessly "fix" with their
proposals - however, these categories simply exist to make the concepts easier
to understand in English.

Let me repeat Robin's proposal which I liked, for the sake of discussion:

> 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.

So, if you take my interpretation of Robin's proposal, part 2, and rephrase it,
you get:

2. Leave the attitudinals at the beginning of the sentence exactly as the Book
   describes them.

Good enough?

The part I wished to focus on was what the attitudinals do in other places.

The Book doesn't explicitly mention attitudinals in their own sentence, but
there seems to be a general consensus that they must express a pure emotion.
So 1 is okay.

The examples in the Book seem to show that attitudinals placed later in the
sentence do not change the assertive nature of the sentence. Robin's #3 extends
the meaning of this to make it worth putting the attitudinal there anyway. The
examples in the Book in section 8 seem to support this.

The Book appears to say nothing about what an attitudinal does after the
brivla. Robin's #4 deals with that in the safest way - it remains an emotion
which is in some way attached to the brivla and does not modify the assertive
nature of the sentence.

So, now we have a proposal which contradicts neither the Book nor usage in
Lojban, and which allows for both attitudinals which modify an assertion and
attitudinals which don't. What more could we need?
-- 
Rob Speer