Subject: Re: [lojban] The new approach to attitudinals

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 22:48:03 -0400

At 10:21 PM 06/10/2001 -0400, Invent Yourself wrote:
>Without .a'o the sentence is an assertion about reality. With .a'o, under
>the new proposal, the sentence is an assertion about the speaker's hopes.
>That is what he is calling a change in the truth value, I believe.

I don't think that a sentence should ever be "about" the attitude expressed 
by an attached attitudinal. A sentence is always "about" the bridi in some 
way, and the attitudinal is in someway expressing the speaker's attitude 
concerning the bridi. If you want to talk about the attitude, use cinmo or 
a selbri word pertaining directly to the attitude.

a'o and other attitudes may change the pragmatics so that we interpret the 
tense/aspect on an untensed bridi differently. In the case of a'o in 
potential-world situations, it tends to suggest the 
potential-but-not-actual (nu'o) aspect, whereas some of the other 
attitudinals suggest a can-and-has (pu'i) aspect.

Don't spoil the attitudinals by making them the focus of the sentence.

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