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On Wed, Apr 24, 2002 at 08:27:02AM -0600, Rex May - Baloo wrote: > on 4/23/02 11:31 PM, Rob Speer at rob@hidden.email wrote: > > > In Lojban it's accepted that many attitudinals change the truth value. > > > If so, they're not 'attitudinals', really, but 'opinionals.' :) Here's how I think they're divided: Attitudinals that don't change the truth value: a'a attentive a'e alertness a'i effort a'u interest e'e competence e'i feeling constraint i'a acceptance i'e approval i'i togetherness i'o appreciation i'u familiarity ie agreement ii fear io respect iu love o'a pride o'e closeness o'i caution o'o patience o'u relaxation oi complaint u'a gain u'e wonder u'i amusement u'o courage u'u repentance ua discovery ue surprise ui happiness uo completion uu pity Ones that are used both ways: ai intent au desire e'o request (Some people use this in place of "ko" to turn a statement into a vague imperative. I hate this. It's unavoidable that politeness will load extraneous baggage onto many sentences, like the English "Could you get the phone?", but we might as well START the language by saying what we mean.) e'u suggestion (this has the same problem as e'o) ei obligation (this is sometimes used alone, not modifying the truth value, and sometimes used to modify a predicate with "should". A predicate that means 'event x1 ought to happen (according to x2)' would do just as well.) Ones that almost always change the truth value: a'o hope e'a permission ia belief (okay, I forgot this was around. At least it's only one word and not a whole sequence of them) Sometimes the non-VV words which have the same grammar (specifically, that they can go anywhere and modify the previous word) as UI are considered "attitudinals" as well, but few of them relate to attitudes, and I suspect that this is just for lack of a better word. In the cmavo list I attached, you'll find the basic attitudinals in the UI1 section, and the others in UI2-UI7. Many of these modify truth values, but this is not a fault; in many cases it's what makes them useful. To explain the labels like UI2 - these are called "selma'o", and are groupings of the cmavo by their grammatical function. The part which is a word is the actual selma'o, and sometimes the selma'o is then subdivided by the _semantic_ function of the words, which is where the number comes in. Consider "xu", the yes/no question marker. It most certainly changes the truth value. But because it can go anywhere, its selma'o is UI. > > 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). > > Yes. And I want a bare grovor to be an observative, not an imperative. > > Dom. (I see a) house. > Ven. (somebody) comes. > > Is that the case in Lojban? Yes. > And my plan for imperatives was simply: > > Go tciq ke zi ven. I invite that you come. Ugh. Once again, unnecessary baggage on imperatives, and this doesn't even leave any concise way to say it. If someone's about to get hit by a flying object, would you say "I invite that you duck?" In Lojban, imperatives are done with "ko", a pronoun that is an analogue of "do" (you) but commands the listener to make it true. "ko bajra" means "Run". "ko kurji ko" (ko ko kurji) means "Take care of yourself". I'm thinking it would be nicer if there were a word which modified a pronoun to make it imperative, so for example it could attach to "we" for "Let's run", but this would add another syllable to the basic imperative. In Lojban "e'o" or "ei" is used in that case, which is a tad clunky but I'm okay with it because it's done out of necessity. It's far better, at least, than changing "ko bajra" to "e'o bajra" to pretend it isn't imperative. -- Rob Speer