WikiDiscuss

(Moved from Intensifiers section.)

On 6/27/05, John E Clifford <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> I guess the basic question is, "What does it mean
> to say that something is intensely additional?"

That the additional case is not an ordinary one, but
an extreme one.

> As near as I can make out, the cvlaim seems to be
> that it is that the addition arouses some intense
> emotion (though not necessarily intensely: "even"
> is more literally {ji'a ue} but not necessarily
> {ji'a ue sai}).

I think extreme cases are often surprising, but they need
not be. It is not a necessary condition for "even" that the
case be surprising. For example, I don't think there is
anything wrong with something like:

lo xagji cribe cu citka lo cinki ku ji'a sai ue nai
A hungry bear will eat even insects, unsurprisingly.

So while "even" often does go together with surprise,
because extreme cases tend to be the stranger ones,
surprise is not really a part of what "even" expresses.

Having said that, if what someone wants is truly to
express surprise, and they would do it with "even" in
English, they might perfectly well do it with {ji'a ue}
in Lojban.

> > Why not? It indicates an additonal case, but an
> > extreme one
> > rather than just any other one.
>
> Well, extreme in what way? Things are added or
> not; there isn't a more extreme adding.

Some things get added more naturally than others,
that's all. What is extreme depends of course on
context.

> Of
> course, what is added may itself be extreme in
> some way, but that seems to be a very different
> matter.

Of course. Insects may be extreme in number, for
example, but what counts in the example is that
they are extreme as food for bears.

> > {ji'a nai} should mean something along the
> > lines of "except", but that's
> > a different point.
>
> Again there is a jump here, though maybe less a
> one than for {jia sai} as "even". I take it
> that, out of all the things that suffexed {nai}
> has been taken to do (the whole range of
> negations and beyond, applied to just about
> anything in the vicinity),

Mostly opposites.

> this is a case of
> negating (perhaps polar, perhaps merely
> contradictory)the efeect of {ji'a}, that is,
> either not adding or actually taking away.

I'd go with the opposite of adding, i.e. taking away, but
I don't think I've ever seen it used.

> On
> the one hand, if we list what is added, we call
> attention with this to what is not added (but
> might be expected to be?). On the other hand, if
> we give the addition in general terms we
> explicitly list the exceptions "all but..." or
> "most but particularly not."

A better way of doing "all but ..." is {ro na'e bo ...}.
It's not clear how a UI could be used in this case,
and perhaps that is why {ji'a nai} is not actually
used.

> Both of these are
> perhaps recoverable, especially if we know what
> {nai} is doing<

{nai} generally reverses the sense of the modified word.

but they still seem to be less
> than literal/compositional. Again, the idiom
> seems fine, if nonliteral idioms are allowed.

Perhaps it is only one of several possible choices, but it
would not be idiomatic in the sense that the meaning can't
be obtained from the meanings of the components.

mu'o mi'e xorxes