Re: [lojban] Baby word: "cry"

[Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>]

On Wed, Nov 02, 2011 at 04:15:54PM -0400, Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG wrote:
> Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> >We only have klaku, which requires tears.  I don't normally
> >produce tears when I cry, and the babies can cry for hours
> >without producing any at all.
> >
> >I've been using {dunku krixa} for the babies, but I myself
> >frequently cry (as in, my internal physiological experience is
> >that of crying) without sound or tears.
> 
> dunku alone would be sufficient to describe your "internal
> physiological experience that does not involve making a sound".

Huh.  Yeah, OK, fair enough.

> krixa alone is sufficient to describe what a baby might do for
> hours, with or without tears.  Prepending dunku to it attributes
> the crying to a specific emotion/physiological experience that the
> baby might not actually be experiencing, and it begs for a se
> dunku that you (probably) cannot know exists.

Point.

> (of course in talking to the baby, you might ask "dunku ma" in
> response to lo nu krixa, 

I have asked this of each of them literally dozens of times in the 2
weeks they've been alive.  :)  (Those exact words, I mean, although
more commonly it's {do dunka ma doi [cmevla]} ).

> bearing in mind that the answer (the baby doesn't know to respond
> with) might be "na'i")

Fair enough.

> Why be more specific than "krixa" alone when you don't know that
> ka dunku is involved?

Well, it's true that they have no other way to communicate, but I
have to assume that if they were in a {mi na dunku} sort of state,
they wouldn't be {krixa}-ing.  I mean, *something* has to be wrong,
yeah?

I actually use {dunku} far more than {krixa} for that reason, and
usually by itself.

> I'll stretch a little on this with regard to your general topic
> and observe that when talking to children, most people tend to use
> simple vocabulary even at the cost of some accuracy in what they
> are saying.  I would be striving for fluent speech at this point,
> focusing on good pronunciation because the sounds rather than the
> words are what the babies are capable of learning at this stage -
> it matters more how you say it than what you say.

Yeah, I'm generally aware of that; I try to stick to {mu'i ma do
dunku} level sentences or so.  Occassionally I'll rattle off
something longer, but that's not really intended for the babies as
much as for me.

> I think I would also be using lots of attitudinals and evidentials
> and the like - simple words without much concept behind them.
> Rather than stressing complete sentences with multiple places
> filled in, lots of observatives with attitudinal notes seem in
> order.

+1

> There are books and on-line materials on early childhood language
> acquisition that might provide additional insights on talking to
> infants  in general (and the resulting effect on language
> acquisition) that you can look into during the wee hours.  You
> might also want to make contact with the Klingonist who tried
> talking to his infant in that language to learn if any lessons
> were learned that might be relevant to Lojban.

I don't really have the time/brain-space to do actual research.
Reading, yes; finding things to read, not so much.  So if you want
to help there that might be useful.

-Robin

-- 
http://singinst.org/ :  Our last, best hope for a fantastic future.
Lojban (http://www.lojban.org/): The language in which "this parrot
is dead" is "ti poi spitaki cu morsi", but "this sentence is false"
is "na nei".   My personal page: http://www.digitalkingdom.org/rlp/

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