Re: [lojban] Re: xu dai

[tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com>]

On 13 July 2011 18:45, John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 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.

"mi stidi" and ".e'u" seem to be capable of imparting the same
information, direction, and attitude; both can be equally Informative,
Directive, and Expressive. They differ much in syntax but perhaps
little in speech act type. If I change "mi stidi lo nu do klama" to
".e'u do klama", the syntax changes, but the type of speech act
doesn't necessarily.

If I said ".ui" while my actual inner state is ".uinai", would that be
an invalid Lojban expression? If not, attitudinals aren't necessarily
Expressive, mirroring the speaker's inner states, as you define it.


> 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.

Right, questions aim to elicit an answer. And I consider that an
attitude, a mental posture, on the part of the utterer. You ask a
question, you express your attitude toward a propositional construct:

  xu do klama
  "You come" -- true or false?

  ma klama
  "X comes" -- what is X?

Both are not only Directive but also likely Expressive, expressing the
speaker's mental posture. And Expressive can be realized by UI or
non-UI.


> 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'.

Suppose there are two athletes, ko'a and ko'e, preparing for the
Olympic 100 meters. They are equally determined to win the gold medal.
They go through the same physical and emotional hardship. Eventually,
at the game, ko'e wins the gold medal, ko'a the silver. ko'e is
evidentlly blissed out. ko'a distressfully cries, but ko'a can
understand what is like to win the first prize and easily empathize
with ko'e so as to say to ko'e ".ui cai dai". Whose actual feeling is
more likely being represented by this: ko'a's or ko'e's? Would you say
ko'a's 'matches' ko'e's?


mu'o mi'e tijlan

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