Subject: Re: [lojban] RE: Rabbity Sand-Laugher

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 19:55:00 EDT

In a message dated 6/5/2001 5:29:12 PM Central Daylight Time, [email-masked] 
writes:

> In a message dated 6/5/2001 4:24:38 PM Central Daylight Time, 
> [email-masked] writes: 
> 
> 
> 
> >> <It would be best, IMO, if you sent these sorts of things to the list as 
>> a whole. In future I will redirect my responses to you back to the 
>> list.> 
>> 
> 
The rest of the note in question runs

In a message dated 6/5/2001 12:54:33 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> Umm, I think it's pretty freaking obvious.  He's empathising
> with/expressing what he believes to be _your_ opinion, which he
> expresses as "le nu fanva la .alis. cu palci".  A bit unorthodox, but I
> found it instantly clear.  Oh, he's also expressing repulsion,
> disbelief, and wonder at your opinion.  The 'dai' clearly states that
> the opinion is not his own.
> 

I agree that that is what he meant to say and that it is perfectly clear, my 
only point is that he does not say it.  He says that translating Alice is 
evil, his source for that claim is indicated (but not asserted) to be his 
understanding of my opinion (he got it wrong, but that is irrelevant). He 
also indicates disdain (repulsion is not the opposite of interest, I 
shouldn't think), disbelief and wonder at the claim that he (first on the 
list) has just made.  Both empathy and opinion are also bad grounds for 
claims, as this case points out.  
"dai" doesn't state anything, though it does indicate that the emotion 
expressed is originally someone else's -- if "empathy" is taken literally, it 
is now also the speaker's.  Of course, none of the other attiudinals state 
anything either -- it is a Lojban 0 mistake to use them as if they did (and 
the opposite move, too -- both malglico in a particularly misleading way).
Relevantly to the matter under discussion, xod has a standing claim -- by 
deeds, he may be too modest to assert it -- to be in an upper echelon of 
Lojbanists, below the top four or five perhaps, but quite high up, yet he 
regularly makes these kinds of simple errors, often falls into incredibly 
complex construction for simple situations, and not infrequently insists that 
he -- not the Book or someone above him in the hierarchy -- is right.  Isit 
a wonder that I hold little hope for Lojban translations now of fairly 
sophisticated material?