Attitudinals

[CJ FINE <cbmvax!uunet!bradford.ac.uk!C.J.Fine>]

Continuing discussion on my dialogue - lojbab answers me.
> >
> >Generally, I'm quite happy about your translation - there are just a
> >couple of points.  The first one is that the whole genesis of writing
> >this dialogue was to get a very colloquial, laconic idiom - and the
> >observatives were part of that.  I see no reason why a jbocru in that
> >sort of conversation would not say "zarci" and "vrici" (which, note, are
> >perfectly grammatical) rather than making sumti of them.
>
> The questions asked were "ma", not "mo", and I'm still at the pedagogic
> stage that I don't want to encourage misusage; we want people to be
> aware of the difference between sumti and selbri, and I think our
> emphasis on this will keep colloquial usage 'straight' for a while.  If
> the questions had been "mo" a selbri answer would have been appropriate.

Point taken. I don't think people who have got to the stage of
colloquial usage will be bound by such niceties, but your pedagogic
purpose is worthwhile.

>
> >I like "tu'a loi skina" (I hadn't understood "tu'a" before) but, the
> >same comment applies:  you're putting extra verbiage in his mouth to
> >achieve a somehow 'more appropriate' grammatical form - and I challenge
> >whether this is necessary or desirable.
>
> tu'a was intended to make such things shorter.  B is not "skina"ing,
> and your laconic answer is thus false.  In conversation here, that is the
> sort of thing that causes much fun to be made of the speaker (in a zabna
> sense of course).  People seem to delight in taking other people literally.

I remember the same thing used to happen when we talked Loglan, and a
bare predicate was an imperative.

>
> >"malckasu" was not what I meant - I think "termabla" is probably better
> >(I didn't check the exact definition of 'mabla')
>
> I translated the English you gave 'mocked', which is a relation between
> a mocker and a mockee.  Perhaps we can make mabla places fit so that
> termabla works.

I meant 'cussed' or 'swore at' , which to me is different from 'mocked'
or 'ridiculed'. To me, mocking or ridiculing is one particular form of
derogative, where the target is humiliated by being described or
compared as small, unimportant or laughable.

>
> >Your "ne'i le gusta" loses something that was deliberately there, viz
> >the rhetorical build-up of "ca ...  .i ca ...  .i ca" - or are you going
> >to tell me that that sort ofrhetorical effect can/should/must be
> >conveyed by UI?
>
> I'm not sure what rhetorical effect you were trying for.  You were going
> for a)loconic expression and b)colloquial usage.  I tried to do that
> with lots of brief prepositional phrases; lenu's aren't especially
> laconic.  Mine translates "Yesterday.  In the restaurant.  ..."  Yours
> as "Yesterday.  During your sitting which was inside the restaurant ..."

Good point, and you are probably right.
There were two things going on in what I was trying to do. One was
echoing the "ca" in "ca ma", with increasing precision - that you did
lose. The other was getting the rhetorical effect of "Yesterday [pause]
In the restaurant [pause] When you ..." (note that the parallel "ca"
isn't in the English - I composed the dialogue in Lojban). The only way
that occurred to me of expressing those pauses in Lojban was by making
them separate sentences (of course the speaker could pause for effect
too, but that is not significant). Perhaps there is a cmavo that would do
what I wanted.

>
> >HOWEVER - I get into problems with your suggestion as other than a
> >literary device.  I don't believe many people will ever use some of the
> >'negative' attitudinals - and certainly not two guys talking in the
> >street.  Are you seriously supposing that the sort of person who goes
> >into a sulk, whose entire body language and gesture belies his insistent
> >"I'm OK", will suddenly start verbalising the feelings which he is
> >probably not even admitting he has?
>
> I hope so.  What body language and gestures are to be used with Lojban?
> There may be some universals, but I don't think that I would recognize a
> Japanese "sulk".  Now perhaps your two people know each other's body
> language from some other language in common, but then they probably
> wouldn't be using colloquial Lojban for such a conversation.
>
> The thing is, that with Lojban allowing such liberal emotive expression
> and not having body language, coupled with its heavy initial development
> as a written language, I think that Lojban will develop colloquialisms
> that ARE emotional expressive, and incidentally emotionally honest.  When I
> (soon) revise the attotudinal paper, i will emphaisze this more strongly.

It sounds like you're saying that what I've said isn't a problem,
because Lojban is never going to get used in that sort of context. You
may well be right, but that doesn't make it not a problem.
 I agree that Lojban will deveop colloquialisms that are emotionally
expressive and honest - but I don't agree that they will always get
used.
 If you're suggesting that simply by learning Lojban with all its
UI selma'o, people will become better able to recognise and express
their emotions, I don't believe it - or rather, I believe it in a
limited sense (becoming more aware of distinctions) but not in the
general sense of the emotional integrity that very many people in our
society seem to lack, and all of us lack some of the time.
 I just realised that I might be arguing against one form of the WH - but
actually I am not, because even if I am right, that merely says that one
group of features of one language will not change people's world view:
that does not affect the general case.
 I am reminded of Suzette Hayden Elgin's "Native Tongue" (in which she
used Laadan) - I thought the central idea (an explicit application of
the WH) highly unsatisfying, because 1) she didn't give any indication
of how it was that the new language magically changed all the women's
behaviour, and 2) the only account she did give of the novelty of the
language was in terms of 'encodings' - that is to say new vocabulary
for concepts that had not had single words before. In my view this
attribute of a language would be marginal to any Whorfian effects.
 The application of the above to the present argument is that you are
suggesting that by learning a language with a very broad and powerful
for expressing different emotions and making fine distinctions, people
will learn to express their emotions more clearly. I do not accept that:
they may well become more adept at distinguishing the emotions that they
allow themselves to feel and recognise, but I do not believe that
learning Lojban will suddenly stop a sulker, for example, from
continuing to maintain that everything is rosy - with attitudinals as
well as predications.
        In Daniel F Galouye's novel "Dark Universe", most of the
characters are humans who have lived underground in the dark for
generations. Exploring, some of them come across a monster and 'hear' a
'screaming silence' - others in the group hear the monster, but not this
'screaming silence'. Eventually, by the end of the book, the hero learns
that the screaming silence is called 'light' and that what he is doing
is 'seeing' it - he learns all the varied vocabulary to do with seeing,
and learns to distinguish colours for example. But those of his
companions who didn't 'hear' it in the first place - it turns out they
are all people who wear their eyes closed - they can neither apprehend
it, nor understand the distinctions.