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Re: [lojban] Time for the perenial other-centric-.ui conversation
The stuff about Japanese is interesting in its own right, but hardly relevant
to Lojban, which is built on a different system (if any). Nor is the English
significant except to show that the construction is not odd (which I suppose the
Japanese does too), The "where " case is not related either, since it does not
involve two words or even two morphemes of English (I suppose you could argue
about that, but it doesn't get this discussion much further). As for the
analogy of 'bu'au pei', I can't find find the first part on any standard list,
so I assume it is some experimental innovation. But is it an attitudinal --
even in the rather broad sense -- to which 'pei' could be properly applied?
"Place" doesn't say much about its role in an utterance; it is one of those word
to express position that xorxes mentioned as parallel to the words in emotional
space? Apparently, from your further remarks. So, 'bu'au' is my way of
expressing some sense I have of my special location, and 'bu'aupei' asks me to
specify it more closely using another word that is used for expressing such
feelings (see why I stick to "expression"?). It is still shifting from first to
second person without any warning. Which, aside from the absurdity of requesting
someone to emote in order to get some straightforward factual information (which
the emoting doesn't actually give), is what I object to about 'uipei' and the
like. Otherwise, your remark seems to fit the situation exactly and thus make
the absurdity more clear, since "where" is not an attitudinal question (whatever
that means), but a factual one. As for "whappy", are you saying that "happy" or
even "I am happy" have the same roles to play as "Yippee"? They can, of course,
be used in that way, but need not be, while "Yippee" is much more restricted.
So I see know reason why "whappy" could not be just a factual question, usually
presented as "Are you happy" or some such and A chooses to display the answer
rather than say it. Maybe "whippy" would be a better case. though with the
usual problems. 'jenai' belongs to a totally different system and is perfectly
non-problematic. It involves no unmarked shifts of person, no unusual requests,
nothing at all out of line with the other connectives, or even with the
connective question (I am sure there is one, I just don't remember what it is
off hand). 'uinai' doesn't work that way: as you say, it means "Express your
degree of happines" or some such thing and my question is simply, how does it
mean that compositionally. That it is an idiom with that meaning I quite
except, though I think it is a misleading one to have in a logical language; my
objection is to saying it is just a regular development like 'uinai'.
----- Original Message ----
From: tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tue, November 30, 2010 6:42:07 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] Time for the perenial other-centric-.ui conversation
On 30 November 2010 19:17, John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:
> "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.
In Japanese, "-nai" is a suffix for the negative form of a predicate
(verb or adjective):
ki-ru (dasni ja'a)
ki-nai (dasni na)
ureshi-i (gleki ja'a)
ureshi-ku-nai (gleki na)
Furthermore, Japanese "oi", like British English "oi", happens to be
an exact equivalent of Lojban "oi", and the following expression is
not impossible in an everyday Japanese situation:
oi-ja-nai (oi zei na)
This can possibly be used as a negating counter-complaint against
someone who complained with "oi" (meaning that this someone was wrong
in uttering "oi"). We can draw many analogies like this between Lojban
and natlangs.
However, xorxes' point is that the meaning of "uipei", like that of
"uinai", is compositional, and I don't think that's the case with
English "Whee - not!" or Japanese "ki-nai", "oi-ja-nai", etc.
You say "uinai" is natural with respect to "Whee - not!", but it's
very unlikely that we would find "Whee - not!" as an index in any
conventional dictionary, while it's very likely that we would find
"uinai" as such an index (jbovlaste does actually list "uinai" for
"unhappiness").
> 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.
The meaning of English "where" can be considered compositional, made
out of "wh-" (question) and "-ere" (place), which may be similar to
"bu'au pei" that was hypothetically suggested by xorxes. Asking
"Where?", then, would according to you come out to mean "Place - but
what?". This reading sounds dumb, but this isn't how the word comes
out to experienced English speakers, is it? The listener is supposed
to reply such that the "-ere" part of "where" gets specified: "here",
"there", "at my house", etc. In my opinion, "pei" is similar to "wh-",
except that it asks for an attitudinal expression rather than a
predicate-oriented expression.
If I were to invent an English compositional word for "uipei", I might
suggest something like "whappy" from "wh-" and "happy".
A: You bought me a cake!
B: Whappy?
A: Yippee!!
In this example, A isn't supposed to answer with a propositional claim
like "I am happy.", because the question is not concerned with the
format of proposition. It therefore contrasts with the following,
which is proposition-oriented:
A: You bought me a cake!
B: Are you happy?
A: I am, very much.
"Yippee!!" and "I am very much happy." are different manners of
expression. But they can express the same thing.
>> 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.
"broda jenai brode" is an expression not so much of "broda true;
brode, true - not" as of "broda but not brode" based on the
compositional meaning of "jenai". When I see "jenai", it doesn't
partitively say to me "both the first and second elements are true -
the second is not true"; it says "the first is true but the second is
not", and that's because the meaning of "jenai" is readily
compositional at the moment of the utterance.
> 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.]
"uipei" is to be taken as semantically one thing at the moment of its
utterance, and, in such an occasion of "pei", the utterer does not
intend a first-person expression to begin with. "pei" does not mark
such an intention of "this is my personal [UI]; now express your
[UI]"; it marks "express your [UI]".
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