On Sun, Aug 12, 2012 at 3:22 PM, Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG
<lojbab@lojban.org> wrote:
Mike S. wrote:
If I am free and officially sanctioned to say "ui" disingenuously i.e.
without really being happy, or I can say "ai" without even the slightest
conscious real intention (at the time, perhaps speaking a complete lie)
of follow-through, then I fear that "ui" and "ai" have no real meaning.
Is this what is wanted?
Consider what politicians would do with these
conventions. Consider what they already do speaking English.
One cannot stop people from misusing language. That doesn't mean that one should define language for the intent of having it misused.
If attitudinals don't assert at least a vague albeit real feeling felt
by the speaker, what do attitudinals really do?
Express. Attitude.
Something that human beings do naturally, often without language, which makes it rather difficult to communicate via email or even by telephone in the same way we can communicate in person. Attitudinals are an attempt to remedy that deficiency, and they only really work if we can use them fluently without thinking about them, in the same way that body language, tone of voice, and the occasional ejaculative _expression_ works for natlang speakers.
But why in a logical language, a predicate-based
language, should the semantics of this small set of illocutionary
constructions be extended to the inner states of the speaker?
The attitudinals are orthogonal to the predicate-base language. They fulfil an expressive need of human beings that CANNOT be met with predictations, that are fundamentally NOT "logical".
Someone wishing to speak a purely "logical" language would never use attitudinals.
Why
_doesn't_ the speaker saying "ui" simply imply that the speaker is
really gleki,
Because human beings are illogical.
as a person would intuitively suspect? What does it
really mean otherwise?
It doesn't "mean" anything, truth-functionally.
And yet attitudinals do have meaning. Meaning and truth-value have almost nothing in common.
stevo
What do we gain from that dubious interpretation?
Humanity.
--
Bob LeChevalier lojbab@lojban.org www.lojban.org
President and Founder, The Logical Language Group, Inc.