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

[John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com>]

Well, since I made none of the claims or inferences mentioned here, I don't 
entirely see the relevance of these remarks (although I agree that the moves are 
made more often than they should be -- and not just in Lojban).  Yes, UI is used 
for several other purposes than expressing emotions and mark a variety of speech 
acts.  I have not yet found a useful way of expressing that explicitly but have 
several times warned that I use the "express emotion" line as a shorthand for a 
longer description.  If you want to insist that I list all the things out, I 
will beut it gets tedious for me and boring for you (and you will probably dig 
up some cases I missed, anyhow).  On the flip[ side, of course other things can 
be used to express emotions: I suppose that 'mi gleki', for example, can be used 
as expressively as "I'm happy", though with the same potential for 
misunderstanding -- which 'ui' doesn't have. As for inference 3, I don't quite 
know what you mean by "communicate".  In something like a normal meaning, just 
about every language act communicates something or other, as do most 
non-linguistic acts.  Presumably, 'ui' communicates, among other things, that 
the speaker is happy.  But it does not state that.  It is neither true nor 
false.  It is evidence but not a claim.  And so on.  Do you mean something more 
by "communicate"?
While I have a certain amount of difficulty with 'pei', I can see it usefulness, 
both as another greeting and in more intense examination.  I can't fathom 
'uipei', however, except as an idiom of a particularly illogical sort.  Come to 
that, I have some trouble with your standard responses, which seem not to be 
responsive at all -- well, 'nai' is OK, but 'ja'ai', aside from being an 
innovations whose rationale is obscure, seems to be simply incoherent and have 
nothing to do with what 'pei' is presumably asking (of course, the incoherence 
may conceal a useful kernel).  For the rest, is "ha ha" a legitimate answer to 
"How are you feeling?" Maybe so, though in a rather extended sense. And of 
course 'ie' is a perfectly good answer to 'xu do tugni' since that is in fact 
its main purpose, as a "Yes" for a particular sort of question. But whether 
'iepei' is a legitimate question is not thereby decided; it means "Yes, innit" 
and it might be possible to extract from that something like a real question, 
but the path is tortuous -- unless you just say it's an idiom, so don't expect 
it to be logical.
The "grunts and wheezes" line was hyperbole, as you well know,  But the point 
there was that if it takes a real question (declarative statement with an 
interrogative particle of some sort) to locate3 one in physical space, why 
shouldn't it take one to locate one in emotional space.  I don't think much of 
the analogy, but it was Bergen's line not mine.  But, along that same paragraph, 
just what other purposes does 'ui' have than expressing happiness?
I have to admit that 'la'apei' makes more sense than 'uipei' and then suspect 
that that sense carries over to other cases where it is relatively absurd.  On 
the other hand, the absurdity of 'uipei' makes me skeptical about 'la'apei' as 
well.  But. as I have said. we have an idiom here and though they are illogical, 
we seem to be content to allow them, so let them ride (but they are another mark 
against the "logical language" claim, even in the official restricted version).
From: Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Mon, November 29, 2010 7:04:46 AM
Subject: Re: [lojban] Time for the perenial other-centric-.ui conversation

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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