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On Tue, Apr 23, 2002 at 06:54:33PM -0600, Rex May - Baloo wrote:
> >> Do Lojban attitudinals differ much from the Loglan in concept?
> >
> > I don't think they do. But I haven't really seen Lojban attitudinals.
[Loglan]
> They're at:
> http://www.loglan.org/Loglan1/chap5.html#sec5.10
Thank you for understanding what I meant. :)
> > In short, they can go anywhere in the text, they modify the word or
> > structure that they follow (so putting one after .i modifies the whole
> > sentence, and that is where they are usually found), and there are
> > attitudinal modifiers like "sai" (strong) and "cai" (intense) that
> > modify attitudinals (or indeed any word that they follow).
> >
> > Ceqli attitudinals would be a good role for words beginning with a
> > vowel. .VV and .VW could be included as pinvor forms for this purpose,
> > and then there would be a 1-to-1 match with Lojban's .VV and .V'V
> > attitudinals. For example, consider the ones starting with a:
> >
> > Lojban: .ai .au .a'a .a'e .a'i .a'o .a'u
> > Ceqli: .aj .aw .ar .an .aq .al .am
>
> Sounds like pretty much the same thing. I'm mainly against them. There is
> this notion in Loglan that I think is completely unreal, that
> It is probably that he's asleep.
> He's probably asleep.
> are profoundly different, somehow. I don't agree. Now, there may be room
> for some pinvor attitudinals of some kind, but certainly not with the ones
> that have to do with conviction. I prefer the setup:
>
> X ke Y.
>
> Where X is a predicate and Y is the base sentence. Often the predicate will
> just be an observative that can take an unspoken Go as a subject.
> Go cur ke da dorm.
> Cur ke da dorm.
>
Lojban moved "conviction" into separate cmavo, and even so people more
often say "cumki fa" (it is possible that...) so this change has already
happened. But this doesn't negate the usefulness of all attitudinals.
> Problem with this system is that they can't be free modifiers this way
> without some changes. Maybe a pinvor that means "this statement that
> follows or surrounds" Say 'taw'.
>
> To grosa kan, taw tru, dorm.
> And the taw can go anywhere.
Sounds like Lojban's metalinguistic "sei". This can be an option too.
> And some things that I'd think a set of attitudinals aren't included.
>
> Go froy ke Y. I'm happy that Y.
> Froy ke Y.
> Go koler ke Y. I'm angry that Y.
>
> The VV attitudinals, then, express a limited number of things that can be
> expressed just as well, if not as tersely, by pivor+predicate forms. And
> they are limited by the number of VV's.
You underestimate the usefulness of attitudinals. I haven't experienced
spoken Lojban, but I'm told that they are absolutely the most useful
words to know. And essentially, there is a difference between saying
"Whee!" and "I'm happy."
In a logical language, you need room for illogical utterances like
these.
> Loglan eo (please) for example, is very limited. Means just one thing. In
> English we have many more options.
> Please enter. Enter, I beg you. I invite you to enter. I implore you to
> enter.
> I want Ceqli to be that flexible.
No reason it can't be. But eo (Lojban e'o) should be one of the options.
> Now, the Loglan position is that attitudinals do not change the truth value
> of the sentence, which is absurd. To add 'maybe' to a sentence certainly
> changes its truth value, not to mention an eo, which puts it in the
> imperative mood, unless I'm missing something.
In Lojban it's accepted that many attitudinals change the truth value.
Some people consider it bad form to include "e'o" without "ko" (the
imperative you). This would be muddled in Loglan because they had no
imperative you pronoun, and in fact it was implied from leaving out the
x1 (an inconsistent and English-centric idea).
Incidentally, Rex, you could probably benefit from having the Lojban
wordlists. It seems this section of Lojban's website is currently down,
so I'm attaching a wordlist I have of all the gismu (root words) and
cmavo.
--
Rob Speer