Subject: Re: [lojban] The "system" of attitudinals

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2001 17:35:19 EDT

In a message dated 6/15/2001 3:11:38 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> Please clarify - why is a'o still considered inadequate? Because people want 
> to
> use it in two ways?
> 
> At the beginning of a sentence, a'o is defined by the Book to be a
> propositional attitude indicator.
> In its own sentence, a'o hopes for something unspecified and so can be used 
> to
> express a simple feeling of hope.
> 
> What's the problem?
> 

Well, the "at the beginning of a sentence" part is not in the Book; there it 
is propositional attitude indicator wherever it occurs. And, the Book is 
less than pelucid on what a propositional attitude indicator does: the 
examples given differ on almost all the crucial features. 
The Book makes it relatively clear that {a'o mi klama le zarci} (and {mi a'o 
klama le zarci} and {mi klama a'o le zarci} and {mi klama le zarci a'o}) 
expresses a hope that I go to the store (with slightly different emphases in 
the various cases, answering to different possibilities in context, we 
assume). It does not assert that I go to the store; indeed, it presupposes 
that I do not yet know whether I go to the store.
At least some Lojbanist have used this sentence or at least some of the 
variants to both assert that I do go to the store and to express a hope for 
some unspecified event possibly consequent upon that trip -- or even just a 
conswquent feeling of hopefulness, without a discernible object.
Whether or not this latter reading is legitmate now, it clearly represents a 
real situation and one which should, therefore, have a Lojban expression. It 
does not under the present rules. It has not yet been clearly dealt with by 
the reform suggestions. That is the problem.