Re: PLI: evidentials in reported speech

["Mark E. Shoulson" <shoulson@CS.COLUMBIA.EDU>]

>Date:         Wed, 18 Dec 1996 18:53:21 GMT+0
>From: And Rosta <a.rosta@UCLAN.AC.UK>
>Organization: University of Central Lancashire
>
>The simple answer is that unquoted UI (or most of them) hold
>at utterance level and are not subordinable within, say, a
>reported jufra se valsi. They are like "Wow!" and "Ouch!" and
>"OOH, there there" and parentheticals like "(I reckon)", etc.
>Similarly in English "He read that Julie Christie (phwoar!)
>plays Gertrude", said by me, the "phwoar" expresses my emotion.
>
>If you wanted to report me saying "JC (phwoar!) is playing G"
>then you might say "La and said lickerishly that JC is playing
>G", for example. Same goes for Lojban.
>
>Or have I missed the point of the debate?

I was under the impression it was just the other way 'round.  I thought
that with minimal changes, you could take a huge utterance said by anyone,
put lu/li'u around it (assuming it's grammatical Lojban) and say "la
bab. cusku..." and attribute it all to the speaker.  Without having to
check for the myriads of UI words that probably are there; only if there's
a sa'a (which then has to become sa'asa'a).  Otherwise it becomes terribly
difficult to quote people, since UI words are (or should be) fairly common
in speech, quoted and otherwise.

~mark