Re: [lojban] Time for the perenial other-centric-.ui conversation

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 12:27 AM, John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:
> The point keeps being that what you are doing is seeking information not an
> expression of some sentiment, emotion, or what have you.

You keep thinking of UI as things used to express a sentiment, emotion
or what have you, but UIs are not *just* that.

True observation: some UIs are most often used to express an emotion.

Invalid inference #1: Every UI is always used to express an emotion
and for nothing else.

Invalid inference #2: Only UIs can be used to express an emotion.

It is strange that in the Lojban community, this jumping from Some X
is Y to Every X is Y and Only X is Y is so frequent.

Invalid inference #3: Since UIs are expressive, they cannot be
communicative. If you want to communicate something, you need to use a
proposition.

> The answer is, as you say, yes or no, and those are the answers
> to factual questions, nothing to do with 'ui' or even 'a'o', so why
> bring them into the question at all.

The main answer to "pei" is "ja'ai" or "nai". For more nuanced
answers, there are other members of CAI. And you can throw in other
specifiers like the ro'V series for even more nuance. And others.

> The way to
> ask whether you agree or not is 'xu do tugni' not 'iepei', which is something
> like "You damned betcha , innit?"  You are asking about sommone's attitude and
> you want a factual answer; therefore, you are asking a factual quest, a bridi
> with 'xu' attached -- or with a question word at some point in it.

"iepei" is a perfectly good way to ask whether someone agrees with
something you are saying or not.

> That's how
> you perform that speech act in a logical language.  This is not Neanderthal,
> after all, where the conversation is entirely in grunts.

UIs are not grunts. They are words with meanings, like all other words
of the language. Some of them are most often used purely to express an
emotion. Please don't jump from there to "each one of them can only be
used to express an emotion".

> Expressing a whatever need not come from the gut and may go through the brai,
> but it is still a different act from stating a fact or asking a factual question
> (any kind of question as far as I can see).

Of course they are different speech acts. Indeed the function of some
UIs is precisely to specify the kind of speech act you are performing.
They are not all and always used for the same type of speech act.

> The reason for the myth is to drive
> home tis fundamental point, which obviously needs some more driving.

Unfortunately, that "fundamental point" is wrong, and driving it home
only creates more confusion in an area where we already have too much
of it.

> 'la'a cai' expresses your confidence in the following statement being true, less
> than 'ju'o' more than 'la'a' alone, but it is a discursive, not a modal and is
> not false if the event is unlikely, as the modal case would be.

Which has nothing to do with the fact that "la'apei" is a perfectly
good way of asking for someone's confidence on something being the
case.

> It is grounds
> for thinking that you believe the event likely (though not definitive grounds);
> it is not grounds for thinking the event is likely, nor does it claim to be (or
> anything else for that matter).

And "la'apei" is a perfectly reasonable question, with a potentially
informative answer. It is perfectly reasonable to ask someone to be
explicit about how certain they are of something.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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