Subject: Re: [lojban] An approach to attitudinals

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2001 11:35:13 -0400

At 05:05 PM 06/12/2001 -0700, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
>Here's an extension that I think I like:
>
>1. In a sentence by itself, UI is a bare emotion.
>2. At the front of a sentence, UI modifies the assertive nature of the
>whole bridi.
>3. After a particular sumti, UI modifies the assertive nature of the
>element, but leaves the assertive nature of the bridi alone.
>4. After the brivla, UI does not modify the assertive nature at all.
>
>Note that #2 contravenes the book.

This ignores other places that a UI can appear.

The correct generalization is that UI reflects the speaker's attitude when 
contemplating that element of language that the UI attaches to, with the 
scope of the attitudinal determined by the scope of the language 
element. At the beginning of the sentence, attached to ".i" the scope is 
the entire sentence and the speaker is reacting to that sentence (but if 
attached to ni'o refers to an entire paragraph). At the end of a sentence, 
attached to a final vau, the scope is the same. In a sentence by itself 
within a longer text stream, the expression is "point in time" and doesn't 
associate with any particular bit of text, but thus in effect ambiguously 
refers to any or all preceding text and/or all following text assuming that 
one or the other is stimulating the emotive response.

I see no reason for this "modifying the assertive nature" language. What 
seems to be the case is that it is pragmatics and not grammar that 
determines whether an attitudinal has propositional effect, with the 
pragmatics being specific to the particular emotion and when/how it is 
usually felt; I think we should leave it at that.

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