Subject: Re: [lojban] If it ain't broke, don't fix it (was an approach to attitudinals)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2001 13:50:28 EDT

In a message dated 6/15/2001 8:37:35 AM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> Also, you sent me a personal copy of this, and you sent one to the list.
> However, I happen to be a list subscriber, so I got two copies. Please,
> pick one target and use it.
> 

Didn't read the whole message again? I've already apologized for that and 
asked aol to explain how to reset its Reply to the way it was originally: to 
list.

<What do you mean, last ditch? The paragraph of text clearly agrees with
me. I will concede defeat once you are able to convince Cowan and Lojbab
of this point. Otherwise, you are simply trying to annoy me.>

Last ditch in the sense that it enters the discussion two weeks into it and 
after any other reasonable efforts had failed to work. As for the text 
*clearly* agreeing with you, the text waffles so much about what these 
critters mean it would be amazing if some of it did not agree with you. The 
examples, however, seem quite clear: ai, a'o and au are pretty clearly 
non-assertive, a'i is not clear, and the others, including a'u, are clearly 
assertive. Nothing that Cowan has said recently (and nothing in the book that 
makes any sense) goes against this, nor does anything that Lojbab has said 
flat out, without an overdose of qualifications. And, of course, I am trying 
to annoy you, since you work at annoying me -- and defaming me to boot.

<Furthermore, Lojbab clearly stated that the PRAGMATICS of the situation
determine the assertiveness of the UI. You and everyone reading knew
exactly what the context was. Yet you alone actively chose to interpret it
in the most ridiculous way possible.>

Well, not *clearly* again. In an effort to save the present system he has 
proposed that, but the pragmatics he usually is talking about is that 
inherent in the particular UI, not the overall situation. The situation, as 
you recall, was that you were working overtime to insult me -- among other 
things -- and that you had just written a remarkably sloppy sentence, on 
which I then remarked -- by the Book. If you don't like this treatment, 
learn the rules and use them correctly. Or make up a set of rules you can 
use correctly and get everyone to accept them. You can't have it both ways, 
as I have said several times already.

<I suggest you wait for other responses before you respond to Lojban text,
so you can better figure out the context and meaning from the more
advanced readers.>

I can't help notice that, aside from zipping good ones off your remarks, 
people pretty generally ignore them (as they do mine) unless we get into a 
row. So far, when your remarks have been grammatical and coherent (and 
usually even when not) I have had not trouble reading them, though you seem 
unable to understand or profit from my criticism of them (whether about 
truth, grammaticality, rhetorical effect or whatever). 
You really should read your mail all the way through.

<I can be repulsed by an idea, by a suggestion, by a hypothetical. You
know this already so WHY are you arguing it?>
All of these things mentioned must be present to repulse you. What you 
displayed in your sentence to be present was a state-of-affairs, the referent 
of a bridi. Had you put that sentence in quotes, then it would have been the 
sentence itself that repulsed you (one of the possibilities I considered that 
you meant), had you put that sentence in a {le du'u} clause after {la pycyn 
jinvi}, it would have been the situation of my holding that view that 
repulsed you (another possibility). But you did neither of the latter, so it 
was the present situation (as you perceived it -- I think the whole sentence 
is false) that repulsed you, namely that translating Alice is evil.