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Re: [lojban] Re: other-centric UI
Lindar wrote:
So either this is a bug in CLL that needs to be fixed next time there
is a re-print or UI can have propositional meaning.
It's kind of a bug in the language. One can't ask a question without
UI being able to completely change the meaning of a sentence,
NA also completely changed the meaning of the sentence. Why would you
think that adding a word cannot completely change the meaning of the
sentence.
but then
that destroys half of the language because {.i e'u do dansu}
apparently means "I suggest you dance." according to CLL.
How does that addition "destroy" anything?
If that's the case, what the hell is the point of having a word like stidi?
Because stidi expresses a claim about a suggester and a suggestion.
{.i do dansu}
is a claim about you dancing.
{.i e'u do dansu}
is also a claim about you dancing. It is a suggestion that that claim
should be true (whether by action or thought is unclear).
There is, however, no way to use .e'u to translate "Obama suggested that
the Israelis and the Palestinians meet weekly".
(Or rather, if you use it, you are suggesting that it should be made
true or considered true (tense is one factor on which applies)).
What's the point of having any words? Why not just have all emoticraps
and sumti and not have a real language?
You seem to have a perverse definition of "language".
One could have a very expressive language using only "emoticraps" and
"sumti", but it would not be a very complete language. (Actually,
depending on what you mean by sumti, you could, since sumti can include
bridi within them, but it would have to use a strongly different style
for truth-functional claims). One could have a language without
"emoticraps" or some equivalent expressed through tone of voice, body
language, etc, but it wouldn't be a human language.
> My point is
that the CLL claims {.i .e'u do dansu} means "I suggest you dance."
and I say that (that is absolutely stupid, and) it means, "You dance."
and the speaker feels suggestive.
What would that mean?
> What should -really- be said is
{.i .e'u ko dansu}, which comes off to me like a softening of ko so it
doesn't sound so demanding.
It is.
> It sounds like, "You should dance.". Now
what the Lojban -should- be is {.i mi stidi lo nu do dansu} because
that -actually means- "I suggest you dance.".
That is a truth claim that "I suggest you dance". It is not a
suggestion. Its truth is analyzed in the same way one would analyze
"Obama suggests you dance" or "You and I suggest that Obama dances" or
"Obama suggests that you meet with the Israelis and the Palestinians
every week".
To claim that something is a suggestion (or has been a suggestion, or
will be suggested in the future) is not actually MAKING the suggestion.
I will definitely admit that {.i .ai mi klama} could be read with an
implicit ba in there,
Only because time travel is impossible. %^)
And what you might be trying to express with {.i .ai mi klama} is
something other than {.i mi ba klama}. If there was a party yesterday
that I missed {.i .ai.u'u mi klama} may indicate that you intended to
go, and should have gone, but didn't.
Or perhaps, you have visited someone in hospital the last several days
and show up today, and they seem surprised. You might say {.i .ai mi
klama} indicating that you intended to come both times, and indeed
context may mean that what you are saying is {.i mi di'i.ai klama}
(Either "I intended to come regularly, so you shouldn't be surprised to
see me" or "I intend to come regularly so I hope you won't be surprised
to see me tomorrow"). You could express those long winded relationships
as bridi, but then you've changed the focus of your statement from being
about the coming, to being about the intention, and you'll end up adding
emotive and possibly judgmental stuff about surprise and expectation on
the part of the other person.
Another non-future example. You and someone else smell smoke. "Fagri"
merely infers a fire, and in many cases would lead to a call to the fire
department. "fagri .ai" tells the other person that either you are an
arsonist (unlikely) or that you started a fire intentionally, or told
someone else to do so (perhaps in the fireplace, but in any case it is
not something to necessarily be concerned about) - it is the fire that
is the important thing and not who started it.
You could probably communicate all this more explicitly and precisely
using bridi. But few people would. They would instead come up with a
shorter way to express the key thing they are trying to communicate, and
to hell with what the grammar rules say.
> but the UI in of itself doesn't affect the meaning as much as you
would like.
But it does. UI can, as someone (pc?) noted, make a statement
counterfactual. Or it might invoke a possible world (any statement
about the future necessarily invokes a possible world, since we don't
know the future)
So we could either find some happy medium, I could be wrong about the
whole mess and then be a whiny emo brat and quit because I disagree
with everyone and don't want to speak a retarded language wherein UI
actually changes the meaning of a bridi instead of expressing one's
feelings (giant zo'o here if you didn't catch that =P)
Expressing your feelings with UI doesn't change the meaning of the
bridi. {.i .ai mi klama ti} is still a bridi relating "me" and "here"
and movement by an unstated route and means of transport. But it can
change the meaning of the utterance that contains the bridi, which is
not the same as the bridi itself. It might make the utterance
counterfactual, or it might simply constrain the interpretation of the
unstated parts of the bridi - as you said, by implying a probable "ba"
that wouldn't otherwise be assumed.
lojbab
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