On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 12:06 PM, John E Clifford <
kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 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).
generalize it indiscriminately to all UIs. Like calling them "grunts".
Yes, some UIs can be likened in some respects to grunts, but others
have nothing in common with them.
> Yes, UI is used
> for several other purposes than expressing emotions and mark a variety of speech
> acts.
Right.
> 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).
I don't insist that you do anything, but if you ever feel like making
that list, it might be quite interesting. I don't think I would find
it boring.
> 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",
Yes.
>though with the same potential for
> misunderstanding -- which 'ui' doesn't have.
I'm not sure what kind of misunderstanding you have in mind.
> 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.
I was contrasting the merely expressive function of language, where an
interlocutor is irrelevant, with its communicative function, where an
interlocutor or intended audience is crucial.
> Presumably, 'ui' communicates, among other things, that
> the speaker is happy.
In its core use, the speaker just expresses happiness when saying
"ui". If that happens to communicate their happiness, it is as a side
effect. But that's "ui", not UI, just in case someone wants to make
the usual jump of "whatever we say of 'ui' goes for all of UI". For
many UIs, an audience is crucial or at least highly relevant.
> 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"?
I hope I made myself a little more clear now.
> 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.
"uipei" is not the best choice to examine "pei", just because "ui" is
mainly purely expressive, and asking someone to provide a purely
expressive locution is slightly silly. (But still meaningful.) But
don't go and conlude from that that "UIpei" in general is silly.
"UIpei" does not mean, as you seem to think, that the speaker says UI
and then, independently, asks the listener to provide some kind of
comment on that. "pei" modifies the meaning of the preceding word, in
such a way that "UIpei" is a question. "Uipei" has a perfectly
compositional meaning, but it is not the meaning of UI and then
separately the meaning of "pei". (The same can be said of "UInai" for
example. When you say "UInai" you are not expressing something with
UI, and then somehow reversing what you just expressed. You are
expressing something with "UInai".) UIpei asks the listener to answer
with "UI" or "UInai". It's really quite simple, and it seems to me you
are just trying hard to not understand.
> 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).
"UI ja'ai" is equivalent to UI by itself, I'm quite sure you
understood that perfectly. It is the identity modifier in the CAI/NAI
series, if you prefer to put it that way.
> 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.
"ie" makes more sense in response to a statement than to a question,
because a question makes no claim with which to agree or disagree.
Pragmatically, since the question as posed is about agreement,
answering "ie" would probably be understood, but strictly speaking
there is no claim advanced with which to agree or disagree.
> 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.
No, you are simply wrong about how "pei" works. It is perfectly
compositional, and it forms a compound with the preceding UI that asks
the listener to answer with "ie[ja'ai]" or "ienai" (or any of the
other variants).
> 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.
Because we happen to have words to express one's location in emotional
space but we just don't happen to have any to express one's location
in physical space (other than propositionally).
> 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?
"ui" is for expressing happiness. UI has lots and lots of different
purposes besides expressing emotions. UI is not only, maybe not even
mainly, for expressing emotions.
> 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.
See? You think that some property of one UI somehow must generalize to
all UIs. But there's no reason to expect that, because other than
their common syntax, there's not that much that can be said of all of
them in general.
> But. as I have said. we have an idiom here and though they are illogical,
No we don't. "UIpei" is no more idiomatic than "UInai" or "UIcu'i", or
many other compounds with compositional meaning. Even less so, since
UInai is sometimes hard to figure, but UIpei is always transparent.
> 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).
Logic doesn't really enter into it, but "pei" is certainly nice and regular.