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

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

This is going to be long and boring, if  you are not interested in the topic 
(and probably even if you are) so feel even freer than usual to skip it.
e xorxe

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).

Sometimes you seem to pick a property of some particular UI and
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.

[I refuse to be attacked for my jokes.  Indeed, no UI sounds much like a grunt 
since they don’t have final consonants, nor like a wheeze either (no initial 
h).  But, if that is the worst generalization I made (though I didn’t make that 
one), I don’t feel too bad anyhow.  I have indeed generalized about classes of 
UI (and related areas) and perhaps not been clear about the limits of the 
generality – just as I have used “express” for a number of different activities, 

with diminishing similarities as we get farther from the core.  Sorry ‘bout 
that.  Perhaps if the list were a bit better organized, it would be possible to 
deal with problems more precisely.  As it is, it is hard to remember, just 
looking at it, whether a word is a pure expression of a feeling or a world 
changer, so some of my particular remarks may have been out of line for 
particular example.  But I do think we have not gotten very far from expressions 

proper in this discussion, so the fault may not be very great.]

> 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.

[Of course you are.  The one between a slightly more complex expression of joy 
than ‘ui’ and a claim about your emotional state.  The one is sincere or not, 
the other is true or false.]

> 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.

[Is that jump really usual?  If it is, maybe we should look to see if there may 
not be something in it.  I don’t think I made that jump, by the way.]

> 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.

[Yup.  But I am not clear about the relevance.  To be sure, a person can say 
‘ui’ when there is no one about, and be performing the same act she does when 
someone is about.  But that is true of most speech acts (though occasionally we 
have to split the speaker into speaker and hearer).  Now, it is the case that 
the rational use of ‘pei’ does require another person, but the split self 
routine still works.]

> 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.


[ But of course ‘uinai’ is a simple blend of ‘ui’ and ‘nai’: “Whee – not!”, 
totally natural (well, only lately) English, as is “Whee – sorta” and the like.  

What is a case where this sort of thing is not true? So, ‘uipei’ comes out to 
mean “Whee – but how much?” or something like that, possibly meaningfull but 
basically dumb  -- nothing like the use you claim for it. Something like it has 
a perfectly meaningful  use, of course: A: ui   B: pei. No change of meaning of 
either ‘ui’ or ‘pei’ and a sensible question (if a bit rude in this case).  But 
you would have attaching ‘pei’ change ‘ui’ from a first person expression to a 
prompting for a second person expression, with a tag yet.  None of the others 
work anything like that.]

Ø      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.
Ø      
Ø      [Well, as I said, this is an innovation whose purpose is obscure.  I 
suppose it is meant to reassure that I really meant thisUI rather than some 
other: “Whee – yes indeed”, probably in response to a ‘pei’.  It seems like 
there are other places where something like this would be more useful, but I 
most of them can be covered by the placement of ‘ja’a’]

> 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.
Ø      
Ø      [I suppose this is a contextual matter.  One doesn’t ordinarily ask for 
agreement unless there has been a position set out already, the x2 and x3  of 
‘tugni’.  I couldn’t think of a case to lay out, so I skipped it, figuring tou 
could fill in the blanks.]

> 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).
Ø      
Ø      [See above.  In what sense is it compositional? It more like Montague 
grammar  than item and arrangement (or process); the end result has practically 
nothing to do with its parts:  the first person ‘ui’ has been put in someone 
else’s mouth. The question, which made sense of after someones exclamation, is 
asking for such an exclamation, whether or not the second person was so 
inclined.  And so on.]
Ø      
> 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 locate 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).
Ø      
Ø      [I doubt that it is happenstance, but still, even if we had expressions 
of some sort to express our perceived location, it would still make sense to as 
for a GPS reading in a straightforward question.  And to get an answer in a 
straightforward declarative sentence.  And no amount of  expressive content is 
going to come up to that standard.]
Ø      
Ø      > 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.
Ø      
Ø      [You here (and occasionally earlier) seem to be making the confusion 
between ‘ui’ and “UI” of which you unjustly accuseme.  I asked about the word 
‘ui’ not about the whole class UI.  Though, the question applies equally to each 

member of that class: what else does it do than such and such?]
Ø      
> 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.
Ø      
Ø      [ No, I am quite aware that ‘la’a’ is a disclaimer not the expression of 
an emotion and personal only insofar as it is one persons assessment of an 
objective reality.  This connection with objective reality makes the question 
possible without contradiction.  But the fact that it is personal to any extent 
does make me wonder if it is also as logically absurd  as ‘uipei’.  However, on 
the other side, ‘la’apei’ makes sense even before the second says ‘la’a’, again 
thanks to the objective component.  I keep going back and forth on this one.  I 
have no problem coming down on “absurd” with ‘uipei’.]
Ø      
> 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.

[Well, no.  ‘nai’, say, takes a first person expression and then modifies it in 
this case rejecting it “Whee – not”, as we say, and similarly for “Whee – sorta” 

and so on.  But ‘pei’ does not start out with a first person expression and add 
something to it.  It somehow changes the first person expression into a second 
person and then asks about it.  There is a perfectly legitimate (is so far as 
‘pei’ is legitimate at all) use that looks like this: Speaker says ‘ui’,‘pei’say 

the hearer.  No person shifting and a reasonable sort of thing to ask.]


      

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