Re: [lojban] Re: xu dai

[tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com>]

On 12 July 2011 03:48, John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 'xu' changes the nature of the sentence in which it occurs; the attitudinals do
> not affect the sentence at all. They are pure frills grammatically.  If the
> diascursives are things like "I hope that" (in the non-descriptive way "Oh,
> would that"), then they are are somewhere in between: they do express
> something and they also alter the grammar of the sentence (making it
> non-assertive, in particular).

If one said ".oi ti crino" instead of "ti crino", that could well
change the nature of the sentence, such that the addressee might be
tempted to respond in a certain different way:

  A: ti crino (This is green.)
  B: melbi (Beautiful.)

  A: .oi ti crino (Hey, this is green!)
  B: raktu fi ma (What's wrong with that?)

The attitudinals can be more than just pure frills. They can affect
the course of the dialogue. And that's the case for "xu" and other
'discursives' as well:

  A: ti kukte (This is delicious.)
  B: mi jukpa (I cooked it.)

  A: xu ti kukte (Is this good?)
  B: go'i .a'o (I hope so.)

The difference is that 'discursives' prescriptively operate on the
utterer's intention to control the flow of the conversation. They are
explicitly dialogue-determinant with a pre-defined aim. But that
doesn't mean the other UI can't have some intentional or accidental
discursive effects.


On 11 July 2011 22:11, John E. Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Again, asking a question is not expressing an attitude.

An attitude is whatever way you behave towards something that shows
your intention or state of mind. You cannot ask a real question
without expressing that your mind is looking for an answer regarding
something, the focus of the inquiry. Lojban has two main means to
indicate an interrogative focus:

  a) place-holders -- e.g. .i [xo] [ma] [ji] [ma] [mo]
  b) place-markers -- e.g. .i [_xu [pa]_xu [do]_xu [je]_xu [mi]_xu [klama]_xu

With either means, the addressee is to understand that the utterer has
intended the sentence to be interrogative, which is a distinct type of
(at least linguistic) attitude, mood. Both means can be considered to
carry an attitudinal drive.


mu'o mi'e tijlan

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