Subject: Re: [lojban] re: rabbity sand-laugher

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2001 15:29:50 -0400

At 11:47 AM 06/08/2001 -0400, Invent Yourself wrote:
> > An interesting -- and, it now appears, permissible -- point of view. Well,
> > almost. If its truth depends upon my point of view and so on, then he 
> can't
> > attack the claim, as the book says, since it is selfly true. On the other
> > hand, if the evidential function as intended (in Native American languages
> > and Laadan) then he himself has asserted it and on weak evidence indeed 
> (his
> > idea of someone else's opinion). The only way to make tyhe sentence
> > pragmatically sound is to look at one interpretation for one part -- the
> > statement is made and I object to it -- and another interpretation for the
> > other part -- someone else made the statement so don't blame me. This is
> > equivocation at best, and stupidity at worst. Or the other way round -- I
> > never am clear whether it is worse to call someone an idiot or a cheat.
> > Actually, I don't think either applies -- to xod. The book turns out 
> to be
> > so screwed up on this issue -- which I remember as being pretty well 
> cleared
> > up several times over the past years and certainly is in the logical
> > literature -- that he can't really be blamed for not getting it right. The
> > present set-up doesn't allow anyone to get it right, for each choice 
> made is
> > wrong on some place in the chapter.
>
>doi ro .i pe'i le si'o zo dai mapti le seltavla selcinmo cu traji le
>kamselpilno .iseni'ibo lu do jinvi li'u smuni lu pe'idai

If I understand you (always a big "if" since I don't do enough Lojban 
reading), this is precisely what pycyn was complaining about that I thought 
was NOT applicable to the discussion. Lojban attitudinals, as expressions, 
NEVER "mean" a bridi, which is a claim. "pe'idai" is NOT a claim that the 
other person opines something (which is what "do jinvi" means; rather it 
says that the speaker intuits/empathizes that the other person seems to be 
expressing the emotion marked with dai. Having used dai on an evidential, 
we have to treat that evidential as an emotional expression (the 
evidentials can be used attitudinally, so this makes sense) that the 
speaker is picking up.

The closest bridi equivalent to "dai" is thus in my opinion
do cinmo leka [jinvi, in this case] kei

but even this is inexact because I can empathize an emotion in someone even 
if they are not actually expressing that emotion.

If indeed xod intended to convey "do jinvi", those are the words that 
should be used, and not attitudinals. If this is too strong an assertion, 
then "do simlu leka jinvi" might work.

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