Re: [lojban] Re: xu dai

[tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com>]

On 16 July 2011 17:40, John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:
> To be sure, I can infer that you have a suggestion from the fact that you actually propose one, but proposing it isn't saying that you have one, which is what 'mi stidi ... ' does.

I see your point. But an e'u-suggestion can state exactly what the
speaker's suggestion is. It's syntactically indicated. If "e'u" comes
at the beginningn of a sentence, the whole sentence represents that
which I feel "I suggest" about, i.e. the content of what I intend to
be a suggestion. I use a certain syntactical scope marked by "e'u" to
put my suggestion in; how is that different from telling what my
suggestion is by putting it in a NU clause on a certain sumti place of
"stidi"?


> 'mi stidi lo nu do klama' and 'e'u do klama' are not equally Informative speech acts, since 'e'u' makes the following sentence not informative but a suggestion, a Directive speech act.
> [...]
> And, of course, it is usually OK to infer from you stating 'mi stidi ...' that you are actually making that suggestion, though 'mi stidi ...' doesn't actually do that.
> Among the many things that hold for 'mi stidi...' is that it is true or false, neither of which applies to 'e'u ...' though they may have many other properties in common -- mostly those related to the feasibility of the suggestion.

I don't think "e'u" or any UI1 should mark a pre-defined speech act
type for the given sentence. Whether the sentence is informative /
suggestive / etc. largely depends on pragmatics, contexts:

  A: lo vu gerku cu nitcu lo nu mi gy kurji (The dog there needs to be
looked after by me.)
  B: .e'u do tu klama (Why don't you go there?)

  A: do noi bebna cu nitcu lo nu mi do kurji (You imbecile need to be
looked after by me.)
  B: .e'u do klama lo malraistu (How about you go to hell?)

Is the second "e'u" making a suggestion or informing the listener of
the fact that the speaker hates to be looked after?

"True or false" holds for "mi stidi ...", yes, and that's the same for
"e'u ..."; the UI doesn't guarantee that the speaker is actually
making that suggestion. I agree with:

> But, just as one can misinform using an Informative speech act, one can simulate a feeling one does not have in an Expressive speech act.
> The syntactical legitimacy of the form does not rely on its accuracy.

I also agree with:

> The function of Expressive speech acts is to express feeling and the like.
> [...]
> Expressive is always the expression of the speaker's feeling

And I don't think that UI1 cannot be used for other than an Expressive
speech act. Imagine a town in Lojbanistan where the government plans
to build a nuclear power plant. The protesting inhabitants take to the
street and shout ".aunai .aunai". Would that be less Informative than
"na djica .i na djica"? It may be argued even that ".aunai .aunai"
could be as much Directive as Expressive. Is the accused government
supposed to take ".aunai .aunai" as a purely Expressive utterance with
no Directive significance or an utterance with both Expressive and
Directive significances? Would the protesters fail in communicating
the factual piece of information that they don't want the plant in
their town, if they said nothing other than ".aunai .aunai"?

This pertains to your and xorxes' later comments:

On 16 July 2011 23:49, John E. Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:
> And one part of all that is to keep one grammatical distinction overt (or at least clearly marked).
> Now it would be a possible one -- but one uniting slippage, I think, to allow that for certain predicate in certain contexts, when unmarked, to indicate a different speech act from the usual one (informative).
> We do it all the time in English, of course, and it creates countless problems for logical analysis.
> Better to stick to the simple rule, hard though it seems to be for people to grasp or follow (why pursue a language which is supposed to change the way you think and then changes it back so that it works like one you already have?)

2011/7/17 Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> But why should language be limited to serious purposes? It needs to cover the whole gamut of purposes.

For me, 'the simple rule' would be to have "e'u" & "stidi" or "au" &
"djica" etc. being different by default only in their syntax and not
additionally in their speech act types unless explicitly marked as
some.

Now, if

  1) Expressive is always the expression of the speaker's feeling, BUT
  2) koha can simulate with an attitudinal a feeling koha does not have,

what's the point of defining attitudinals as Expressive-only? Indeed,
if we did that, (1) and (2) would wind up being contradictory. Both
you and I agree on (1) and (2); and what appears to be the sole
arrangement for (1) and (2) to not be contradictory, is to not
pre-define and limit all attitidinals to be of a particular speech act
type.


> I find the notion that asking a question is Expressive a little hard to follow:
> what is it expressing?
> Surely not curiosity on the part of the speaker -- or even interest; there are far too many bureaucrats asking too many questions just top fill out a form for that to be plausible.

*Asking* a question is not only Directive, is my opinion. It can be as
Expressive as Directive. It can convey as distinct an attitude to
express something as an action to direct the audience to engage in
something. If an utterance is Directive, should it be always
non-Expressive by category? Can you direct somebody to do something
without expressing your inner state of demanding that it be done? As I
said, the act of questioning is the expression of the speaker's mental
posture toward a propositional construct. The "what is it" attitude.
And by "a mental posture" or "an attitude" I don't mean a state
limited to a biological body. Any lingo-logical performer including
computers in a non-closed system can theoretically have the "what is
it" attitude toward a linguistic object. And when that attitude is
expressed either internally or externally, a question is realized.

I distinguish "asking a question" from "a question", just like
"expressing an emotion" from "an emotion". Questions and emotions per
se are of course not the same thing, but asking a question and
expressing an emotion are both primarily a (biological or
non-biological) cognitive performance, 'attitudinal', in my opinion.


> The questions function is to summon up an answer (period).
> Aiming to elicit an answer hardly seems in line with feeling pain or pleasure or other central UI concepts (though perhaps related to some of the function-changing UI, which are also not Expressive, by and large).

Do we ask a (real) question for the sake always of only summoning up
an answer, or sometimes of also expressing our answer-seeking
attitude? Would the question "xu do mi prami" be a failed utterance if
I couldn't get an answer? Or would it be a successful one regardless
of the response or the lack thereof, for the very fact that I would
have successfully expressed what it is that I question? Like "e'u" and
"aunai", I think the function or the speech act type of "xu" in its
actual uses is dynamically variable, however static its syntax may be.

"Aiming to elicit an answer" seems to have a sense of ".au" or
".uanai". I compare:

  ma klama
  zo'e .uanai klama

  do xu klama
  do .uanai klama

These are analogous if not entirely identical. The main difference is
that "ma" and "xu" explicitly expect of the audience to return a
syntactically corresponding solution, which "uanai" doesn't. "xu" is
used in aiming to elicit an answer, yes; used by what? The utterer.
The same origin as of "uanai". Whenever "xu" is used, an aspect of the
utterer is indicated, in addition to the fact that an answer is
expected to be presented. I consider that Expressive, in addition to
Directive.


> But 'dai' allows that I may feel something akin to what someone else feels when presented with the other person's expressions of their feeling.
> Of course, I may also feel something quite different (maybe at the same time): hatred, jealousy, sympathy and so on.

Would you say the following parenthetical remarks make sense?

  xu broda to mi teryrei lo jei broda toi

  xu dai broda to mi sruma lo du'u na'e mi teryrei lo jei broda toi

I think they do. If I'm asked what the meaning of "xu dai" might be, I
could say "mi sruma lo du'u na'e mi teryrei lo jei ...".

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