Re: [lojban] Re: xu dai

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

We seem to be wading into a definitional swamp.  To stop before we get in over 
our heads, can we agree on the following.  Sentences can be used to perform a 
variety of speech acts.  These acts fall into several families, the most 
commonly mentioned being Informative, Directive, and Expressive.  Attitudinals, 
insofar as they are linguistic at all (a disputed point, but more likely for 
Lojban than generally) are Expressive. mirroring the inner states of the 
speaker.  They may influence the direction of the conversation (as may anything 
said) but that is not their role.  Questions, on the other hand, are Directive: 
they aim to influence someone else's behavior, in this case, come up with an 
answer, so the behavior to be influenced is linguistic, too.  That is, questions 
are intended to influence ths course of the conversation (though not, except 
accidentally, non-linguistic behavior).  Questions may be accompanied by any 
emotion whatsoever, curiosity being a common one, but probably not more common 
than politeness and boredom.
So, to get back to the original question, I can have an empathetic feeling 
matching someone else's feeling and express my feeling (not someone else's) 
using 'dai'.  What would be the parallel in asking a question?  Apparently, 
having a sense that another person wants to ask a question so asking it for 
them.  It is my question. even if I don't care about the answer and someone else 
does. just as it is my feeling, even if it reflects someone else's emotions,  I 
don't find the "just as" at all plausible and, even if it were, what could be 
the point of marking this -- except, perhaps to disassociate yourself from the 
question, an occasionally useful ploy.




----- Original Message ----
From: tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tue, July 12, 2011 4:19:12 AM
Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: xu dai

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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