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

From: Invent Yourself <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 23:46:17 -0400 (EDT)

On Sun, 10 Jun 2001, Bob LeChevalier (lojbab) wrote:

> 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.

Perhaps I phrased it wrong. All I meant was that a'o broda doesn't assert
that broda is true, or that it's false. So, what is really being said,
then? An expression of the speaker's hope. This is under the current
scheme of the Book!

> 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.

I agree. And I also do agree that these are suggestions made by
reasonable listeners, but not assertions by the speaker.

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

I don't think the new approach does that. Really, all that is suggested is
a method of extending the propositional attitude ability, which is already
enjoyed by a*, e*, and some i*, to u*, o*, and the rest of i*. If the
analysis performed by the folks who drew the original distinction is
absolutely correct, the new potentials opened up by the scheme will go
unused. Otherwise, people will find new ways of expression that the
current rules arbitrarily forbid.

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