[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
RE: [lojban] Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
At 11:44 AM 06/13/2001 -0400, Craig wrote:
>Myself, I am not sure that we won't eventually have Lojban attitudinals
>that are NOT translatable to other languages.
You mean they aren't already untranslatable?
They certainly are in terms of the way people are TRYING to translate them
in the ongoing discussion, and to some extent I am irritated that people
are trying to turn attitudinals into bridi when that is one thing that they
explicitly are NOT, even if/when there is some degree of propositional
import to the attitudinal.
(And I am also irritated at any discussion proposing ignoring the book
which takes place in English. After the baseline is lifted, such a
discussion between fluent Lojban speakers would be in order, but the
critical idea behind the baseline is that the language NOT be
prescriptively changed by agreement, but only by successfully communicated
usage without recourse to other languages.)
<end official rant> %^)
I'm beginning to think the
heart of the debate about assertions comes from a perception that they can't
just express a detached feeling of hope on the one hand
It is not a "detached" feeling of hope. It is a feeling of hope in some
way tied to the idea represented by the construct to which it is
attached. The exact nature of that tie is non-specific and there is *by
intention* no way to BE specific with attitudinals.
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. Rather, someone might
legitimately make the claim that I seem to be emoting in the indicated
matter, but the nature of the human condition is that we really aren't
capable of analyzing our emotions truth-functionally while actually emoting
them.
One can call this an assumption.
If one can analyze ones emotions, one should use cinmo or the other
suggested emotion brivla. If one is merely expressing them, then one just
does so, AT BEST trying to identify the linguistic sign that we most
closely associate with what we are emoting.
and that happiness
doesn't affect the truth value on the other hand - a holdover from English.
This is why we get questions like 'Right. And what is the non-propositional
sense of {ai}? "I'm feeling intentuous today"?' which comes from a
difficulty for English speakers to fathom new ways of describing emotions
we've felt our whole lives. I still don't get the propositional sense of
.ui, but I consider that to be my own cultural myopia. So if the fact that
attitudinals can't be translated is proof of the SWH, then lojban. has
served its purpose.
The problem is that, until we have fluent use of the language wherein
people can actually communicate in Lojban whatever communication it is that
an attitudinal uniquely communicates, AND THEN what is communicated cannot
be communicated in English, then we have produced something that might
pertain to the strong SWH.
But we do have ways in English of communicating some attitudes. We
communicate them using various interjections and body language. .ui mi
klama describes what is going on in our heads when we smile broadly and
says something expressing happiness (the obvious "Wheee!" actually pushing
over the line from mere happiness to exhilaration) while thinking about "mi
klama". Our happiness is independent of whether or not "mi klama" is
actually true, but the bridi that is central to the expression is NOT "mi
cinmo", but rather mi klama.
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