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

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

On Sun, Nov 06, 2011 at 11:47:01AM -0300, Jorge Llambías wrote:
> 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:
> >> >
> 
> >> > 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.

(1)  I don't think that applies to UI

(2) Even if it did, it wouldn't help; if I'm not hurting, my saying
{.oi} is a lie, whether it's as a group or not.

> > 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?

I don't think I ever would?  I mean, maybe I'm failing to put myself
in the situation properly, but I can't imagine doing that.  I'd say
"Poor dear!" or "You got an owie." or ... actually, yeah, I can
imagine saying "Ouch! I bet that hurts!", but the "Ouch!" would be
{.oi dai}; I would be empathetically experiencing the pain
(something I'm very good at).  It wouldn't be a simple
acknowledgement of her experience, which is what I was aksing about.

> > 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.

IMO, that's what you just proposed.

-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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