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

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2001 00:04:20

la pycyn cusku di'e

>2) Different functions of attitudinals marked by different positions in
>sentence Disadvantages: The present corpus (several thousand pages) 
>would have
>to be checked at least, and probably revised into conformity.

Are we talking about all UIs, or just those that start with a vowel?

I am assuming that we want a general rule for all of them. If that
is the case, none of the positional proposals addressed the main
issue: Some UIs are used with clearly assertive function, starting
of course with {ju'a}, which has that as its sole function, but
also je'u, ji'a, ju'o, ka'u, ku'i, li'a, mu'a, pe'i, si'a, ta'o,
za'a, zu'u to name the most obvious (in fact I believe most UIs
don't touch the assertiveness of the bare bridi). Some of them
just as clearly remove the assertiveness of the bare bridi: ba'u,
da'i, ki'a, la'a, xu are the most obvious. If we impose a rule
that a UI at the beginning always removes assertiveness or
always maintains assertiveness, then we necessarily have to
re-learn the use of one of those groups, and there are some very
frequently used words in both of them.

That is my main problem with those rules: they are given from
above with no consideration for what is already there, and no
clear explanation of the advantages. It is not enough to look
at one or two attitudinals and generalize from there, we need
to understand the whole picture before trying to "simplify" it.
I love simple rules, as long as they make sense, and I haven't
as yet seen the sense of forcing all UIs to behave in the same
way with respect to assertiveness.

>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.

Isn't {ju'a} enough to add assertiveness to those that don't have it,
and {ju'anai} to remove it from those that do? I am not saying it
is, just considering the possibility. That allows for all the
"Lojbanic" effects expected, like asserting questions and requests,
and not asserting truths.

I would like it if we could eventually move to the next question,
what happens when we run two attitudinals together, but as often
happens we can't even agree on the basic one!

For example, I think neither {pe'i la'a} nor {la'a pe'i} are assertive.
This suggests to me that indicators like {la'a} remove assertiveness,
while those like {pe'i} simply leave what's there unchanged. Just
a first thought on the matter.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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