kau and se'i

[Logical Language Group <cbmvax!uunet!GREBYN.COM!pucc.PRINCETON.EDU!lojbab>]

Mark says in response to John:
>           la sofis. djuno le nu za'a la .artr. klaku
>           Sophy knows the event-of [I observe it!] Arthur weeps
>
>So by the usage suggested by Bob and Nick, this observation would likely
>apply to *Sophy*, not to the speaker.  To get the meaning you want
>without ambiguity, one way is "la sofis. djuno lenu za'ase'i la .artr.
>klaku", while expressing the other reading more carefully could be done
>with "la sofis. djuno lenu za'ase'inai la .artr. klaku".

Hold it!  You are making a generalization about UI attitudinals that I'm
not sure applies.  Having identified that there is an ambiguity in using
'kau' which is specifically for the tricky construct of indirect knowledge
which is speaker independent in usage, I suggested that se'i/se'inai
could resolve that ambiguity.  You can;t resolve an ambiguity that isn't
there, though.

The set of evidentials are defined to have one role - to indicate how
the speaker came to say the sentence.  IF the speaker has knowledge about
why Sophy has knowledge, I think that is a secondary consideration to
the purpose of the evidentials.  Pragmatically therefore, the default for
evidentials would be for them only to refer to the speaker point of view,
and I for one would hesitate trying to use them for another's POV even with
se'inai.

If Sophy is the one who knows through observation, it is properly
expressed using the place structure of djuno (x4 = epistemology), or at
least through tanru.  Indirect discourse inherently is metalinguistic
and is thus a vaguer case.

The discursives as a whole, as their name implies, are centered around
the discourse, and the speaker is the one doing the discussing.  "kau"
was created especially to avoid the weakness of discursives in dealing
with multiple POVs (don't confuse it with "ju'o" which also indicates
knowledge).

I've always envisioned se'inai as being a kind of an empathy expressor,
saying that your attitudes are being expressed in empathy with some
suitably indicated target (either the listerner or some person in the
text) - it modifies other attitudes to resolve ambiguities when empathy
is plausible, which seems implicit with kau and indirect discourse.

lojbab

Added note after discussion with cowan: 'kau' seems too much locked up
in peoples minds with 'knowledge'.  The new cmavo list gives the
keyword 'metalinguistic answer' or something like that (I don;t have the
list handy).
UI consists of a whole variety of not necessarily related things, and you
cannot always generalize from one to another.  Their commonalty is that they
are the same selma'o; i.e. they have the same grammar.  Do not presume them to
be semantically interchangeable.