Re: reply: (1) veridicality

[ucleaar <ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk>]

hris:
> >> If you use "lo" in a non-veridicial case, it
> >> will be jarring to a fluent lojbanist, just as if you said "The
> >> *real* king of France" in English but meant a mere actor or mental
> >> patient.
> >Will it be jarring to a fluent Lojbanist? This depends on whether
> >veridicality is a grammatical constraint on deriving explicatures
> >or a social, pragmatic constraint on deriving implicatures (i.e.
> >propositions the explicature implies in the discourse context).
> >Only in the latter case should the usage jar. In the former case,
> >the usage ought simply to give rise to extra effects: the addressee
> >will assume the speaker is trying to communicate something extra
> >by the nonliteral use of "lo". This is what would happen with your
> >English example "the real king of France is bald" - if this is still
> >referring to the actor, then maybe "real king" is in contrast to an
> >understudy who is a pretender to the role.
> Why would "lo" give rise to special effects?

Because there would be a mismatch between explicature & implicature,
& this generally or at least often gives rise to extra effects. This
happens with irony, figurative language, hyperbole, litotes, etc etc.
[overstatement & understatement].

> I think lojbanists can be made to understand the intention of le and
> lo, and to try to use them "correctly"
> My point is: I think it's possible for a person with some linguistic
> training to deliberately and thoughtfully use "le" and "lo" as prescribed.
> You've shown me how the word requires some social stigma in addition to its
> grammatical rules, but I don't see the problem with that.  Social and
> grammatical rules are equally learnable and followable, aren't they?

Would this be a specific usage convention for "lo", or part of a blanket
injunction to be literal? Either way, is this really part of Lojban?

But it is possible. Someone uses "lo" nonliterally, & it can be pointed
out to them: "Look, when you do this it's like saying 'fuck' in polite
company".

But let it not be so.

> >> Just because a grammar can't regulate how it gets used doesn't mean la
> >> lojbangirz. can't! :-)
> >Indeed not. The jbogirzu can indeed develop these taboos ("thou shalt
> >not use 'ko' or 'lo' in vain, on pain of being very antisocial"). But
> >lohe jboprenu does not seem to me an archconformist.
> Not archconformists, but interested in minutiae of grammar.  If the
> taboos are promulgated as if they were grammar, lei lojbo just might
> respect them.
This would be dishonest & would lose the language some of the respect
it merits.

> I don't mean to criticize prescriptivism or accuse lei lojbo of
> illiberalism.  I remember now that in my one linguistics class it was
> drilled into our heads that scientists who study language have to be
> descriptivists, not prescriptivists.  But I think that's no longer
> true when doing this sort of experimental linguistics.  LLG has to
> wear both hats, prescribing everything in sight up until the point
> when the language community is formed and "released", then shutting
> up and watching what happens.

I see what you mean. But in fact this is not really prescription. Its
like teaching a foreign language. If I tell you, a perfectly competent
speaker of English, how to speak English, I'm being prescriptive, but
if I tell a foreign learner how to speak English I'm just telling them
how the language is (assuming what I tell them is true) - I'm being
descriptive. Certainly this is how I interpret the many occasions when
more competent Lojbanists correct me: I think "thank you for your
patient tuition", not "stick it up your arse". [That's "ass", in
American.]

> I heartily approve of its current prescriptivism, even on points
> that will immediately fall apart during the descriptivist phase.

What do you think will fall apart?

> >Once language users start to flout the rules,
> >I doubt that any lojbo prime mover will start breathing fire,
> >cracking the whip, writing outraged letters to Juhi Lobypilno or
> >the like.
> It'll weaken their efforts if they don't!  The plan as I understand
> it is to crack the whip for 5 years until a significant
> self-sustaining language community is built up (.a'o ko darxi loi
> mudri), and then suddenly stop and watch exactly in what way things
> start to change.

All well and good. But is the whip cracking just to make sure we as
non-native speakers of Lojban get it right, or is there an additional
intention to get Lojban usage to be not only grammatical but conforming
to prescribed conventions?

> >The small amount of research on this question that I know about
> >got people to converse with (a) a real computer, and (b) someone
> >they thought was a computer (because they were hidden from sight
> >and speaking through a vocoder). In both cases, the subjects
> >modified their language, as they would in speaking to a child or
> >foreigner.
> When you say "as they would" do you mean just that they changed their
> language, or that the changes were the same changes as one makes when
> talking to foreigners?

I forget the details, if I ever actually knew them. But I remember the
chief conclusion, which is that people adapt themselves to a computer,
and expect to have to adapt themselves. It might take a while for
people to suss out what they need to do to communicate with computers,
but eventually they'd get it right.

Of course none of this implies Lojban wouldn't be useful for communicating
with computers (though I bet English will get used in preference to
Lojban). L would be useful because of its well documented grammar and its
unambiguous syntax.

> If you and I were both fluent in, say, Croatian, would we have a
> tendency to use typical English figures of speech when talking to
> each other in Croatian, but maybe avoid them when talking with Goran
> (even though he'd probably understand)? Are the range of figures of
> speech more tied to the culture or to the language? I'm not fluent
> enough in any other language to know.
I haven't come across research on that. It must be tough to try to
disentangle language & culture.

---
And