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

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 4:17 PM, John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> [ 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.

No, "uinai" is an expression of saddness, it is not an expression of
happiness followed by the negation (or reversal) of the preceding
expression.

> 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.

You misanalyze both "uinai" and "uipei".

> 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.]

You seem to be confusing words with expressions (i.e. the use of
words). "nai" does not change an expression, it changes a word. If you
really think that expressing sadness is akin to a blend of expressing
happiness and then doing something else, (expressing reversal? or
what?) then I'm afraid we won't get anywhere with this.

> "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.

It is often necessary to have the syntactic support even when the
semantic effect is neutral.

If you understand the purpose of "ja'a" and "ja'e", you will also
understand the purpose of "ja'ai".

> 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’]

I'm surprised that you think "ja'a" can replace "ja'ai", since "ja'a"
is a strictly propositional operator.

>> 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.]

A: xu do mi tugni lo du'u lo snime cu blabi
B: ie

The expected answers to a xu-question are "go'i" or "na go'i", meaning:

go'i= mi do tugni lo du'u lo snime cu blabi
na go'i= mi do na tugni lo du'u lo snime cu blabi

The answer "ie" is pragmatically acceptable, but strictly speaking
doesn't make much sense. It doesn't mean: "ie [go'i]", B agreeing that
they agree, because there was no claim put forth that they agree. It
means "ie [lo snime cu blabi]", but that claim was not put forth
directly either.

The natural use of ïe is in:

A: lo snime cu blabi
B: ie

As a response to a claim, not to a xu-question, or also:

A: lo snime cu blabi iepei
B: ie

as a response to a "iepei" question.

> 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.

No, that's wrong. When someone says "uinai", they don't start by
expressing happiness. The only thing they express is sadness.

> But ‘pei’ does not start out with a first person expression and add
> something to it.

The word "pei" modifies the preceding word. The compound "UI pei" is
used to ask a question. The meaning of "UI pei" is easily and
regularly derived from the meanings of "UI" and "pei".

> It somehow changes the first person expression into a second
> person and then asks about it.

You keep confusing words with expressions (=the use of words).

> 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.]

That's not how "pei" is meant to work, and not how it works in practice either.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.