Re: [lojban] baby words, but general relevance: dai-like cmavo

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 2:47 AM, Robin Lee Powell
<rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org> wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 05, 2011 at 02:23:04PM -0300, Jorge Llambías wrote:
>> On Sat, Nov 5, 2011 at 8:59 AM, Robin Lee Powell
>> <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org> wrote:
>> >
>> > OK, so there's {dai}.  {.ui dai} means "you are happy, and I am
>> > also happy along with you".
>>
>> It doesn't actually mean that,
>
> What does it mean then?

It's an expression used to express a certain feeling, not to express a
proposition, like your English sentence. Your English sentence
expresses a proposition that describes the situation in which that
feeling arises. But I had already said something like that, so
presumably what you are saying is that "means" covers that?

>> > Similarily, I also want {.oi [I see that you are feeling this;
>> > I'm not myself, but I observe it in you]}.  Which, again, {za'a
>> > do dunku}, but when I'm in the flow speaking Lojban, I want a UI
>> > for it.
>>
>> It is fine to just say ".oi" there. You are not saying it *to* the
>> baby, you are saying it *with* her.
>
> I'm sorry, I don't buy that at all.
>
>> It works even better if you don't use your own normal voice but a
>> baby-like voice imitation. Remember that the referent of "mi" can
>> be more subtle than just your own old self.
>
> {mi} isn't relevant here, IMO;

Forget I mentioned "mi" then. Whenever you say something, you may be
lending your voice to speak in the name of a group.

> UI are for directly expressing the
> emotions of the actual immediate speaker, regardless of what {mi} is
> bound to.  Anything else is ... confusing, at the very least.

And yet that's how language seems to work. How would you say "ouch!"
to your baby under the same conditions, if you were speaking in
English rather than in Lojban?

> If
> someone says {.ui} and I don't know if they are happy or if some
> random person around them is happy, the usefullness of UI has
> basically been totally destroyed as far as I can see.

We don't usually see people expressing the feelings of random people
around them, so we probably don't need to worry about that.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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