Re: [lojban] Re: zoi gy. Good Morning! .gy.

[Thimble Smith <tim@desert.net>]

On Thu, Nov 30, 2000 at 09:08:36PM +0000, David Scriven wrote:
> 
> As Pycyn@aol.com just pointed out to me, the English greeting 
> 'good morning" is actually extremely vague in terms of meaning and 
> intent, despite its relative uniformity as a convention.  It can be 
> interpreted as a mere formality, or as an observation, or a wish, 
> or a blessing, etc.  It is the vagueness of the expression that does 
> not translate well into lojban.  So I suppose my original question 
> was contaminated by "malglico."

A tool that might help clarify thinking about this is the Ninio
and Wheeler taxonomy for communicative acts.  The description I
have for it is in the book, _Pragmatic Development_, by Ninio
and Snow (ISBN 0-8133-2471-8).  Anyway, they have a category of
speech acts, "Management of the transition between separation and
co-presence", with "Greet on meeting" meaning "To mark entering
into co-presence".

I know a culture where the standard greeting is "I de no?",
["Are you?"].  The response is, "Mi de, o" ["I am, uh-huh"].
Then the first person says, "I ko aki no?"  ["You came here?"],
and the response is, "Mi ko aki".  These phrases obviously aren't
literal questions and answers.

mi'e tim.