Subject: Re: [lojban] Uses of Language

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 01:17:32

la pycyn cusku di'e

>Nice! But you have about exhausted the forms: there remain only fragments
>and ejaculations and observatives that I can think of -- and even 
>imperatives
>are not a different *form*; the role is determined by the occurrence of 
>{ko}.

In that sense, questions are not a different form either, since {ma},
like {ko}, is just another KOhA, and similarly for all the other
question words. I was not talking about syntactic forms, classifying
those is trivial in Lojban from the very definition of the language.
I'm rather thinking of a semantic classification of the structures
(which syntactically are all alike) but independent or prior to the
use of those structures. Questions seem to be the easiest to identify
(and maybe should be subdivided into fill-in-the-blank questions and
true/false questions).

The program would be to classify sentences of the form <UI> <bridi>
in terms of what the bridi refers to depending on the UI. (Then we
can consider what happens with subclauses and so on, but we should
start with the simplest cases.) I suppose I'm restricting myself to
uses of bridi instead of considering all uses of language.

I can think of at least 5 classes:

1- Assertions (probably most UI leave the bridi as an assertion,
assuming that is its basic function). In these the bridi is used
to refer to a situation which the speaker claims to hold in the
world. (This includes fictional worlds, which I don't think have
much to do with the possible worlds formulation. In fiction we
talk as if the fictional world was real. It is fiction because
we use the assertion forms.)

2- Questions. Here the bridi does not refer to one situation, but
rather to a family of situations (sometimes with only two members)
and the speaker wants to know which member of the family holds in
the world.

3- Potentials. In these the bridi refers to a situation which may
eventually hold in the world, but the speaker indicates no knowledge
or belief that it does, only that it is compatible (ko, a'o, ai, e'o,
la'a).

4- Counterfactuals. The bridi refers to a situation which the speaker
to some degree indicates that does not hold in the world, I'm not
sure to what degree (au, ba'u, da'i, je'unai, ju'onai).

5- Nonsensicals. The speaker indicates that the bridi does not refer
to any situation (ki'a, na'i).

I'm not sure whether in this scheme performatives should be in a
different class than assertions. In them the bridi refers to a
situation that comes to hold in the world as a result of or in
conjunction with the utterance, so in a sense they could be
considered to refer to a situation that holds in the world.

I can't think of any other class at the moment, in terms of
the holding status of the situations referred to by the bridi.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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