Subject: The "system" of attitudinals

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2001 15:04:43 EDT

We have two and a half choices so far, neither of which involves any change 
of grammar or vocabulary -- yet.
1) Keep the present system but clean up the presentation and make maybe a few 
additions or modifications if clearly needed.
Advantages: no change is almost always an advantage. a lot of 
documentation and accepted usage. easy rhetorical devices with position of UI.
Disadvantages: It is going to take a lot of rewriting, as the 
presentation so far has not dealt consistently or clearly with what have 
become the major issues. the features of major interest are currently only 
loosely connected with form, so each word has to be learned separately 
(claimed). known cases of inadequacy (a'o) not dealt with and no program for 
dealing with other cases that may be discovered. present cases limited to 
parallels with English, no allowance for new, Lojbanic, discoveries. 

2) Different functions of attitudinals marked by different positions in 
sentence (beginning, after sumti, after selbri, isolated, ...). the exact 
rules have varied from proposer to proposer.
Advantages: leaves no doubt about the major questions (assertiveness, 
proximate,..) for any UI. opens up a number of new possibilities which might 
give Lojbanic results. probably could be written up as easily as the present 
could be brought up to speed, maybe easier.
Disadvantages: The present corpus (several thousand pages) would have 
to be checked at least, and probably revised into conformity. Many, perhaps 
most, of the new possibilities will prove to be useless. The known problem 
cases have not yet clearly been dealt with. Rhetorical use of position lost.

2.5 (not a serious proposal yet) keep the present system with the addition 
of a small number (max at 4) additional flags to indicate that an attitudinal 
is being used outside its usual role.
Advantages: keeps rhetorical use of position. would deal immediately 
with known inadequacies. 
Diasadvantages: all the rest of 1 plus the immediate need to add new 
expressions. New cases allowed are not all going to be useful, probably.