Re: [lojban] {.au}/{djica}={.ai}/{?}. No gismu for intention

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Aug 12, 2012 at 4:10 PM, Bob LeChevalier, President and
Founder - LLG <lojbab@lojban.org> wrote:
>
> Attitudinals are emotional expressions.  In theory "ui" should be the same
> as what other-language speakers do when they express happiness non-verbally.

Lojban ".ui" is pretty much equivalent to English "whee!" or
"yippee!", which are verbal expressions of happiness or joy. There's
no reason to pretend English doesn't have interjections, or that
Lojban's interjections are all that different from other language's.
Their only special property is their being somewhat systematic. But
not every UI is an interjection, not even every UI1.

> One cannot be untruthful.  One can either express one's feelings or one can
> fail to express one's feelings, possibly making irrelevant noises in the
> process.

Those "irrelevant noises" can however be interpreted by others, and
therefore they do carry meaning, and can be used to deceive. It makes
little difference whether we call them false or fake when used
inappropriately, but they don't turn into irrelevant noises just
because of that.

>  (by my understandiong, "irrealis" means
> that the attitudinal is irrelevant to the truth-functional value of the
> proposition)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrealis_mood

"Irrealis moods are the main set of grammatical moods that indicate
that a certain situation or action is not known to have happened as
the speaker is talking."

Some UIs (e.g. ".a'o", "la'a", "da'i", "xu") give a proposition an
irrealis mood, which means that it is not being claimed by the speaker
as something known to have happened:

.a'o la djan pu tolcri lo jaspu be dy
"Hopefully, John found his passport."

la'a la djan pu tolcri lo jaspu be dy
"Probably, John found his passport."

da'i la djan pu tolcri lo jaspu be dy
"Let's assume John found his passport."

xu la djan pu tolcri lo jaspu be dy
"Did John find his passport."

Those are not claims that John did find his passport. The speaker
doesn't know whether he did or not, that's why an irrealis marker is
used.

> Emotions are NOT "logical", nor truth-functional.  Most people probably
> prefer it that way, even if it makes them sometimes seem a bit delusional.
> So long as we can clearly distinguish between the claim and the emotional
> expression, this causes no problem in communication.

It should be pointed out that most UIs are not used for emotional
expression, although some of them can probably be turned into
expressions of emotion by adding "ro'i".

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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