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

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

Well, if you admit that they are equally factual and the a cases clearly are, 
then the b cases must be factual too, and so, in a logical language, should be 
represented by bridi -- that is just a part of the logical tradition.  While 
Logjam has departed from that tradition in many ways, this would be the first 
time (I think) that it has gone directly against it. BTW I would not have taken 
'o'e' to be spatial but rather emotional closeness, but I may be wrong about 
that.  But, that aside (and the factuality question) I now see how 'o'epei' and 
a response of 'o'e' and maybe some CAI are legitimate, once we get away from the 
notion that the core purpose of UI is expression (etc.) to seeing that as merely 
a use (among several) of the words.  Given that shift -- which no one pointed 
out to me, alas (at least in a way to make me understand it) -- all my 
objections to 'uipei' and responses disappear, except the question of whether 
they are legitimate in a logical language and your arguments pretty much 
convince that they are not, except as abbreviations, with strict rules for 
turning them back into propositional form.  So, we appear to agree, unless I 
have missed some point in your remarks.




----- Original Message ----
From: tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wed, December 1, 2010 10:10:44 AM
Subject: Re: [lojban] Time for the perenial other-centric-.ui conversation

On 1 December 2010 03:43, John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:
>  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.

It is. I said "hypothetically suggested".


>  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.

"o'e", too, is a way of expressing some spatial sense the speaker
perceives. "mi viska ko'a .o'e" can, in my opinion, be an alternative
expression to "mi viska ko'a noi jibni mi". "ko'a is close to me":
while "noi jibni mi" expresses that through a predicative attribution,
"o'e" expresses that through an attitudinal attribution.

Then, suppose you are standing next to me together looking at ko'a,
and I want to ask you if you feel any closeness about the visual
object. I could do that in different ways:

a) mi viska ko'a noi do ganse lo ka ke'a do jibni xu

b) mi viska ko'a .o'epei

Both ask what's essentially the same thing: "you feel closeness about
ko'a?" According to you, these "request you to emote in order to get
some straightforward factual information" and are therefore "absurd".
No, these don't request you to emote; these question whether or not
you feel a particular quality about a particular thing. If you don't,
you can just reply:

a') no'e go'i / to'e go'i / ...

b') o'ecu'i / o'enai / ...

To me, both (a') and (b') would be equally straightforward an answer
to (a) and (b) respectively, and equally factual (or non-factual) to
the extent that I could equally trust or distrust you on either of the
answers. Both (a') and (b') would mean that you do not positively feel
closeness about ko'a, and I can't think of any good reason why I
should by default consider (b') less factual than (a'). If it's
because an attitudinal expression doesn't involve a predicate, does
that mean that parts of a sign language that don't use a predicative
format for the purpose of practicality cannot communicate factual
information? If a boy said "Yay!" as he opened his Christmas gift on
one hand and the father commented on the mother's failed tasteless
Christmas dishes by saying "I liked it very much.", would you say the
boy's attitudinal expression is less fact-bearing than the father's
predicative expression?


> 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.

"Whappy" as a hypothetical interrogative pro-interjection ("pro-" in
the sense of "pro-noun") would ask the listener to respond in the
format of interjection on a certain attitudinal spectrum, and "happy",
"yippee", "whee", "yay", "alas", "alack", etc. fall into that spectrum
(at least from the Lojbanic perspective) and would therefore each be
semantically valid answers to "Whappy?". The regularisation of this
kind of linguistic scheme is what Lojban exemplifies with "ui",
"uisai", "uicai", "uicu'i", "uiru'e", "uinai", "uiro'a", etc. in
relation to "uipei".

The usage of "yippee" may be much restricted, yes, but I think that's
a problem more of convention than of semantics. That people are not
supposed to frequently express their joy/elation with "yippee" is a
social rather than semantic limitation; that "yippee" and "I am very
happy" can refer to the same feeling is not so much subject to the
customary precept about appropriate/inappropriate moments to use
"yippee". A non-customary use can register some extra-meaning in the
context of the speech act, but that wouldn't likely much affect the
prescriptive component of the word's semantics (e.g. if a head of
state yelled "Yippee!" at a formal international conference, many
listeners would take the utterance as an indication of some
abnormality, but that wouldn't affect the word's basic reference to
the feeling of joy/elation).


> '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).

Neither does "uinai" involve unmarked shifts of person or unusual requests.

Both "jenai" and "uinai" are semantically compositional, at least in
that we are not to interpret first "je" or "ui" and only then "nai"
such that it alters the first interpretation.


>  '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.

(Not "uinai" but "uipei".)

"pei" is an interrogative pro-UI, so to speak, and it asks the
listener to respond to that particular linguistic space so as to
resolve the posed question, just like the interrogative pro-sumti
"ma":

do viska ko'a seci'o ma (You see ko'a with the feeling of ___[NOUN].)

do viska ko'a pei (You see ko'a about which you feel "___[INTERJECTION]!".)

And, in both cases, the questioner may be more specific:

do viska ko'a seci'o ma po lo jei gleki (You see ko'a with the
feeling of ___[NOUN] which is specific to the truth value of
happiness.)

do viska ko'a uipei (You see ko'a about which you feel
"___[HAPPINESS-SPECTRUM INTERJECTION]!".)

The difference is that the specificity of "uipei" occurs
compositionally while "seci'o ma po lo jei gleki" is specific in an
analytic way.


>  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'.

Both the compositional "uipei" and the analytic "seci'o ma po lo jei
gleki" appear to me logical in their own way, to the extent that these
are sufficiently unambiguous both syntactically and semantically as to
what the speaker is asking.

-- 
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.


      

-- 
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.