Re: [lojban] Re: xu dai

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

Well given the frequency of "I" and :you" and probably of "hear" and "asking". 
and given the quirks of search engines, I am not too surprised at 50 million 
"hits".  But you have come up with at least one case that actually used the 
expression, and I suppose there are many (not a million, though) more.  I don't 
recall having seen it before, but I immediately recognize it as the introductory 
version of the medial "You may well be asking", used to introduce objections to 
which I have answers.  So, the idea here is that 'xu dai' introduces a question 
which I want to answer (and, indeed, proceed to) but which I attribute to 
someone else -- whether or not they give a damn, indeed, even if they actively 
don't want to ask that question (and, especially, listen to that answer).  
Taking this back to 'dai' home ground, this amounts to my feeling an emotion 
(etc,) and attributing it to someone else by claiming empathy, whether or not 
the other is feeling anything like that.  This is a favorite parental ploy 
(often with faked emotions, even): the "Boy, are we having fun!" line pulled on 
totally bored kids stuck in activities the parents wanted to do (or mistakenly 
thought the kids wanted to do) or that go on too long.  But this is pretty 
clearly not what 'dai' is supposed to do and is even not a likely secondary use 
for it.  So, it would seem that either 'xu dai' is totally separate from 'ui 
dai', with an accidental identity of one word or else it is not a legitimate use 
of 'dai'.  I find the latter more likely.


----- Original Message ----
From: Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wed, July 13, 2011 9:53:27 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: xu dai

On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 11:20 PM, John E. Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Well, aside from the fact that I have never heard anyone say that (to the best 
>of my knowledge),

A Google search for "I hear you ask" gives 50,500,000 hits, so if
people don't say it, it seems they at least do write it..

>what could it possibly mean?

I'm surprised you're not familiar with the expression.

> It looks like a factual claim, but admittedly is not.  So it looks like a 
>certain style of psychobabble from some time ago -- along with "I hear what 
>you're saying" and the like.  Surely that has no place in a logical language any 
>more than in a reasonable culture.  It might, I suppose, be an indirect way to 
>ask a question, but it seems foredoomed to fail in most cases, since the obvious 
>response is "No, I didn't", not an answer.

"No, I didn't" doesn't seem to work. If you are the kind of person who
answers "yes" when asked if you have the time, your comment should be
"But I didn't ask". The expected reaction is of course not to respond
anything, but to wait for the speaker to answer the question they are
sort of attributing to you.

To take one example from the first page of hits: :
http://cwdesigncompany.com/Blog1/2010/10/where-has-cindy-been-of-late-i-hear-you-ask/


> I just don't see how anyone else's mental states has anything to do with my 
>question and I don't see how my top level 'xu', however gussied up, can not be a 
>question.

It is a question, one which the speaker themself is about to answer.
It's a way of setting up a topic, creating interest, etc.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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