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Re: [lojban] Time for the perennial other-centric-.ui conversation
On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 11:43 AM, John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Right as usual; I apologize for generalizing beyond the data. My only
> disagreement would be over whether "I am truly surprised" must make a claim any
> more than "I hope he comes" does.
They both make claims in English, as well as expressing how the
speaker feels. In those cases the speaker expresses how they feel by
making a claim.
In English you don't really have much of an option for expressing hope
other than making a claim, unless you go with something ridiculous for
modern English like "would that he come!". In Spanish you have both
options, like in Lojban:
¡Ojalá que venga!
.a'o (ko'a) klama
¡Espero que venga!
mi pacna lo nu (ko'a) klama
(In fact the Spanish exclamation "ojalá" comes from Arabic meaning
something like "God willing", but in Spanish it is just an
interjection and speakers are not normally aware of the etymology.)
> As for UI, the interesting question is whether
> all are expressions of some emotion (in a veeerry broad sense).
They are not, unless you distort the meaning of "emotion" so much that
it just means "anything expressed by selma'o UI". ".e'a" for example
is used to grant permission, and has nothing to do with any emotion in
the usual sense of "emotion".
> Some of them
> typically are combined with sentences and affect the status of that sentence,
> but the whole might still reasonably be called an expression. There are a few
> that are harder to place.
Most utterances can reasonably be called an expression. Normally when
you say something, you mean to express something. Not all expressions
are made through claims, but that doesn't mean that claims can't be
made in order to express something.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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