Re: Lojban attitudinals

[John Cowan <cowan@CCIL.ORG>]

Lojbab <lojbab@access.digex.net> sent me the
following, and asked me to forward it.

John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org> wrote:

>Claudio Gnoli wrote:
>> The only thing which makes me perplexed is that when one is expressing
>> emotions, his exclamations are quite spontaneous and sudden, so that
>> having to *compound* appropriate words, like <i'enaisai>, could
>> be unnatural. <Aaaaargh!> is less accurate, but simpler.
>>
>> Is there any experience of actual use of compound attitudinals
>> in spoken Lojban?
>
>One tends to invent them only once, and then remember the compound
>as a single unit.  I no longer think of "o'onai" as a compound;
>it's simply the Lojbanic way of expressing anger, like "Grrrrrr!"
>in English.
>
>Likewise, "e'osai" from my signature just means "*Please*" (but
>not "*Please*, *please*, pretty please" which would be "e'ocai").

I agree with John, but want to amplify. there are really several kinds
of attitudinal compounds in Lojban.  Compounds formed by taking a simple
attitudinal, and adding an indication of intensity (e'osai =
e'o/petition + sai/strong emotion) are for me totally spontaneous - I
express the emotion and then I express the intensity.

Compounds formed by a simple attitudinal+ "nai" or "cu'i" for the most
part are simply memorized and internalized as new "simple forms".  You
can analytically recognize o'onai as a scalar negation (opposite) of o'o
(patience) with "o'ocu'i" being "mere toleration", but such analysis
requires that you consciously buy into that particular scale of
attitude, which is not necessary if you memorize the nai varieties as
independent simple forms that can be intensity-specified.

You can similarly learn the cu'i forms as neutral simple forms with no
intensity specifiable; the fact that the word is on a scale serves to
define it (o'ocu'i then is a neutral, openly-expressed, emotion in
between openly expressed patience and openly expressed anger).

To the extent you have memorized these, they tend to come out
spontaneously.

But other compounds exist.  These occur when you wish to express an
emotion for which you know no simple Lojban attitudinal.  In most cases
these come in two forms.  In one case, I feel and wish to express an
emotion, but feel constrained by circumstances and context - I feel at a
basic level that the simple form isn't quite right or is misleading.
For example, I feel the physical symptoms of fear at a gut level, but am
not really "scared", so I might express "ii" fear + "ro'o" physical, and
sometimes adding in "ro'enai" (non-mental).

For the most part, I have not memorized compounds of basic attitudes
with a ro'V classifier, but express them compoundedly almost as
spontaneously as the attitudinal+intensity marker described above.

Then fially there are the emotions you feel for which you just don't
know a simple Lojban word for, and for which one of the above
compounding methods doesn't satisfy.  These take time and cogitation for
me, but not necessarily for a long time.  An example I can easily
envision needing sometime might be "appreciation+neutral-approval" for
the emotion we describe in English with "I appreciate the thought
but...".  This is not one I would memorize or internalize (at least I
haven't and probably won't in the near future), but suspect that I would
do so iff I used it a lot.

The process of doing so, and of you understanding me when I do so, seems
like the kind of productive expression in English associated with using
a noun as a verb.  I doubt if such usages happen spontaneously the first
time, but rather someone gropes for a word, uses it not necessarily
correctly, and finds that it is understood.  Thereafter, the usage by
that person and others of, say, "impact" as a verb, is pretty much
spontaneous.  In Lojban we have designed this kind of productivity into
the language, and in the case of attitudinals there are zillions of
possible compounds that will be used only with conscious thought at
first, but could be internalized as unitary concepts given the right
circumstances.

Indeed, having described it that way, this is identical to the process
by which we expect people will learn standard content-word compounds in
Lojban.  At first, you are careful and analytical about both the
wordform and its semantics.  But eventually the compound becomes
internalized so that you never think of its components at all.  This has
happened to me with "e'osai" and "o'onai" in the attitudinals, and with
brivla, selbri (both Lojban gramatical terms) and bavlamdei (=tomorrow)
among content-words.

----
lojbab                                                lojbab@access.digex.net
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA                        703-385-0273
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