Subject: Re: [lojban] An approach to attitudinals

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 15:03:23 EDT

In a message dated 6/10/2001 9:02:04 AM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> . But anyway, if you want to say exactly what you mean, use a bridi.
> > Attitudinals are for expressing how you feel, not for saying what you 
> mean.
> 
> If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that:
> 
> .ui ko'a snada
> .a'o ko'a snada
> 
> both mean the same thing, but tell you different ways that I feel about it. 
> If {a'o} altered the truth of sentence two, I would be using it to say 
> what I meant, and not just how I feel. Assuming
> that's what you're saying I agree with you completely. 
> 
> However, others have already made the claim that sentence 2 does change the 
> meaning of the sentence (and thus they _do_ use attitudinals to say what 
> they mean, at least in their view). I was
> suggesting adding a suffix as a way of keeping both meanings, such that we 
> could express both without the listener either:
> 
> 1) having to guess
> 2) having to memorize which attitudinals are interacting and which are not.
> 
> Barring that, I'd be happiest if there were a list of which attitudinals do 
> and do not interact with the (truth value/meaning) of sentence. Then, when 
> someone misunderstands me, I can point to the
> list and say, "Nope, attitudinal number 206 doesn't do that. 

The attachment idea would be useful if most attitudinals had the double 
function Lojbab ascribes to hope. I don't think they do, though the hope 
case sets a pattern that could be repeated in a number of other cases as 
well. So, until the hope case is dealt with, we'll keep your suggestion in 
mind.
As for the lsit, we're working on it. Originally it was supposed to be 
pretty simple. Starting from afew words thart sounded a lot like English 
exclamations (Whee, oy, ow,...) the list from each initial letter was 
expanded with others that were like the core one in their logics. But, of 
course, too many turned up for one category and too few for another, so some 
lists were mixed. And too many emotions and the like came to light, so we 
started using derivatives of gismu. And now there really is no quick way 
other than memory to tell which does what (association with a gismu often 
helps a bit). And now we are also finding that some items we thoiugh were 
comfortably placed are in fact being used for other things. So the whole 
needs some (unofficial because of the freeze) rethinking.
Just by the way, I think your first examples read as follows: {ui} is 
purely a react to his succeeding, which he has done (or not -- in which case 
the whole is false). {a'o}, as xorxes says, presupposes that he has not 
succeeded (or, at least that the speaker does not know he has) and the whole 
is not truth-valued at all (precative function, not informative), related to 
imperatives, perhaps, but without an addressee and without a specific action 
being called for. I don't see it as claiming that he has succeeded and 
therefore being hopeful that something else (unspecified but what the speaker 
takes to be good) will happen.