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

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 06 Jun 2001 02:15:57 -0400

At 07:39 PM 06/05/2001 -0400, [email-masked] wrote:
>In a message dated 6/5/2001 4:57:56 PM Central Daylight Time,
>[email-masked] writes:
>>Now pc, >you< were (one of?) the earliest to note that attitudinals might
>>change an apparent assertion into something else; I recall mention of
>>possible worlds and the like. The following of the bridi with "ianai"
>>clearly makes the statement NOT an assertion (or rather renders a valid
>>translation as "Translating Alice is evil, NOT!"
>
>And the Book contains a nice separation between such world-creating
>attitudinals and the purely emotive ones that respond to claims: {a'u}, and
>{u'e} and {ianai} in the sense incredulity all clearly belong to the latter
>set, though the Book at this point is inconsistent with itself, since it
>seems to imply that even {ui} has a truth value and then extends that to some
>of these others.

I think, but am not checking at present, that the Book in fact does NOT 
separate attitudinals into two classes, because you and I could not do so 
and stick to said classification over time. Rather the world-creating 
nature of an attitudinal is scalar. bridi, regardless of the attitudinals 
attached thereto, have a truth value, but the meaningfulness of that truth 
value is at question given a more world-creating attitudinal.

In the case of ianai, attitudinally I do not see much difference between 
"incredulity" and what we express in English "NOT!", which I guess is 
"denial". Though we would tend to use the latter to actually make the 
opposite claim (which might better be conveyed using "naku" at the end 
rather than "ianai").

>If the statement is not an assertion, what is it? Is anything asserted in
>the passage in question? If nothing is asserted than what is the point of
>the (very strange) evidential, which should be a side (assertion, comment,
>warning label?) that the assertion is based on the cited evidence, but here
>there is no evidence that was available to the speaker to cite, someone
>else's assumed opinion is not a case of the speaker knowing his own mind.

I think that xod was trying to say that his empathy picked up that bridi as 
being your opinion. I would therefore say that any evidential with dai is 
going to make the bridi NOT an assertion on the part of the speaker, but 
rather something perceived as being an assertion on the part of someone 
else (which in my mind makes the whole sentence more or less 
attitudinal). In that case, attitudinals NOT labelled with dai are the 
speaker's attitudes.

lojbab
--
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org