{xu} is less syntactic than it seems, because you may want to emphasize that your question pertains to different parts of the sentence; you may want to say, for a contrived example, "Are you going to the store to buy
meat?", which implicitly asserts that you, the speaker, do know that the listener is going to the store, but do not know what they are going to the store to buy, and have a guess as to what it is. In Lojban you would then say {[pau] do klama le zarci fi'o se vecnu lo rectu xu} or something similar.
mu'o mi'e latros
On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 1:36 PM, John E. Clifford
<kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:
Well, that makes sense, sorta. I wouldn't have take 'xu' as an attitudinal, for one thing -- it is too clearly syntactic for that (cf. 'ma'). For another, that usage is hardly what the comments on this thread suggest, which are more along the lines I suggest -- with exceptions, I admit.
Sent from my iPad
I'm trying to figure all the various discussions under this label out. Let me summarize what I understand and then set me straight.
1) Since 'xu dai' makes little sense literally, I take it it is an idiom of some sort, apparently meaning "What is the appropriate UI to use here, with reference to someone else?", I.e., "What would contextually defined so and so have used at this point in this sentence --suitably edited?" So, 'mi xu dai klama?' asks you what someone (contextually you, again, but I supposed there is a way to assign it otherwise) would have said in the frame 'do ... klama.' (or maybe, in this case, 'la pycyn ... klama'). The correct answer is presumably something like 'zo ui' ( with an appropriate choice of UI). The answer which seems to be given is 'ui', which clearly wrong in two ways: it is now an _expression_ of the respondent's response to being asked the question (or something like that) and not someone's response to my coming and b) if it were to be that it would be deceptive since it would not actually express that emotion (in the
usual case) but rather simulate it after it had gone away.
I disagree with this interpretation of {xu dai}. Just like {ui dai} ascribes happiness to the listener, {xu dai} ascribes questioning to the listener. This is little use except as a rhetorical device, but AFAICT it's the only consistent interpretation.
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