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Re: [lojban] RE: Rabbity Sand-Laugher
At 07:39 PM 06/05/2001 -0400, pycyn@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 6/5/2001 4:57:56 PM Central Daylight Time,
lojbab@lojban.org writes:
Now pc, >you< were (one of?) the earliest to note that attitudinals might
change an apparent assertion into something else; I recall mention of
possible worlds and the like. The following of the bridi with "ianai"
clearly makes the statement NOT an assertion (or rather renders a valid
translation as "Translating Alice is evil, NOT!"
And the Book contains a nice separation between such world-creating
attitudinals and the purely emotive ones that respond to claims: {a'u}, and
{u'e} and {ianai} in the sense incredulity all clearly belong to the latter
set, though the Book at this point is inconsistent with itself, since it
seems to imply that even {ui} has a truth value and then extends that to some
of these others.
I think, but am not checking at present, that the Book in fact does NOT
separate attitudinals into two classes, because you and I could not do so
and stick to said classification over time. Rather the world-creating
nature of an attitudinal is scalar. bridi, regardless of the attitudinals
attached thereto, have a truth value, but the meaningfulness of that truth
value is at question given a more world-creating attitudinal.
In the case of ianai, attitudinally I do not see much difference between
"incredulity" and what we express in English "NOT!", which I guess is
"denial". Though we would tend to use the latter to actually make the
opposite claim (which might better be conveyed using "naku" at the end
rather than "ianai").
If the statement is not an assertion, what is it? Is anything asserted in
the passage in question? If nothing is asserted than what is the point of
the (very strange) evidential, which should be a side (assertion, comment,
warning label?) that the assertion is based on the cited evidence, but here
there is no evidence that was available to the speaker to cite, someone
else's assumed opinion is not a case of the speaker knowing his own mind.
I think that xod was trying to say that his empathy picked up that bridi as
being your opinion. I would therefore say that any evidential with dai is
going to make the bridi NOT an assertion on the part of the speaker, but
rather something perceived as being an assertion on the part of someone
else (which in my mind makes the whole sentence more or less
attitudinal). In that case, attitudinals NOT labelled with dai are the
speaker's attitudes.
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