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Re: [lojban] Re: other-centric UI
Luke Bergen wrote:
I think you're not correct in saying that all UI must behave the same
way. The CLL describes two distinct kinds of UI (ignoring for the
moment evidentials, discursives, whatever ro'a and friends is, and a few
others I'm probably missing). The "pure emotional indicator" type
described in 13.2 (the kinds starting with 'u', 'o', and the second half
of those starting with 'i') and the "propositional attitude indicators"
type described in 13.3 (those starting with 'a', 'e', and the first half
of 'i').
I find it kind of strange that both of these groupings are in the same
selma'o (UI1).
They are all in the same selma'o UI because they all have the same grammar.
UI1, UI2, UI3 are not different selma'o. I added the numbers because
there were simply so many UI that an alphabetical listing within a
selma'o-sorted list was almost useless, and because we had in some cases
explicitly added a group of UI as a related group (the evidentials),
though sometimes it turned out that actual usage didn't match the
original idea - some of the UI5s are like UI1s in actually expressing an
emotion, while others, like "zo'o" can either be a personal expression
of humor ("LOL") or a discursive (this isn't really serious; I'm being
jocular)
In the case of PA, originally there were separate selma'o with different
grammar rules, but they were merged into one selma'o, with no official
grammar for strings of "numbers" so that paka'osu'epire is grammatical
even though I haven't a clue what it might mean.
If, as some have proposed, the complex tense grammar were to be
eliminated, or simplified, a whole bunch of selma'o might be merged into
PU, and we would put numbers on each subgrouping.
This seems like an oversight.
Not an oversight, but rather an after-the-fact realization that some
members of UI behave differently semantically than others, and
conveniently they happen to be in one part of the alphabet. For a
couple of words added at the end, this realization informed word
assignment, but for most, it was much less systematic.
One thing to remember is that not only did we NOT have a semantic theory
in those early days, I was opposed to even trying to create one (not to
mention having no clue what a semantic theory would look like - I still
don't - remember that I never had any formal training in linguistics or
philosophy). I wanted semantics (as I understood the word) to emerge
from actual usage patterns. And to some extent it did. In the early
years we still made a few changes based on what was learned, but by
1991-1992, resistance to our continued fiddling had hardened and people
were starting to turn away from the language because of it, which is why
I later resisted xorlo, and still reflexively oppose other changes.
Many of the VV members of UI were invented 50 years ago by JCB, and he
never communicated any subgrouping. We preserved a few like "ua", "ui"
and "ia" in re-engineering the language, and filled in the rest of the
VVs trying to keep semantically similar words together, but without
overtly identifying any groups. In 1989-1990, after having added
evidentials and expanded the set of discursives, I did a major
reanalysis of UI, adding in some suggested omissions and trying to more
systematically group things, but without changing any more cmavo than
necessary - that was when we first consciously realized that some groups
of attitudinal UI conjured possible worlds, while others merely reacted
to the real world, but this was 30 years after JCB had created the list
with no clear system to the whole, and some different subgroupings in
the parts (JCB's oa,oe,oo,ou more or less corresponded to eicai, eisai,
eiru'e and eicu'i - by adding the scalars, we freed up words to allow
expression of more different emotions)
They do seem to behave
differently from each other in a significant enough way as
to warrant distinct selma'o.
Not grammatically, and selma'o are historically only about grammar-types
(a extrapolation of "parts of speech" in English informal grammar - some
nouns in English are abstract and some are concrete and there are
significant differences in usage, but grammatically, they are both "nouns").
lojbab
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