'Observative' - terminology

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@GREBYN.COM>]

Obviously the main reason we use the term 'observative' is historical.
There may or may not be a linguistic category of expression that the term
covers, probably not.  In Lojban it is used primarily in contrast to
'imperative' which it successfully displaced as the interpretation of
x1-omitted bridi.

As to whether 'observatives' exist as some unique class of expressions in
Lojban, it is hard to say.  In speech I have headless bridi for one of
three reasons:
- it is an embedded subordinate clause where x1 is to be inferred from context
(I am inclined to label something an observative only if it is the main bridi
and is headless).
- it is a true observative - I am omitting x1 because it is both obvious
from context, and more importantly is obvious because the person I am talking
to can 'observe' the same realtionship that I can , and can therefore observe
the value of x1 - this is what I think is the justified defintion of
observative - not just elided x1, but elided and observable x1.  Other sentences
may hage the form of an observative, stylistically, but are not really
observatives
- it is one of a few sentences where I have picked up net.lojban.usage, though
I think it malglico.  The most obvious of these is "cumki fa ..." for
"it is possible that ...".  I'm not sure why people including myself seem to fe
feel comfortable with such reversal, especiallly since we do it only with
certain words that do so in English  - in general I feel very UN-comfortable
when using a form that is recognizably patterned after an Englishj usage, but
where I can't say why I am doing it in a non-typical Lojban manner.  It is
perhaps possible that what we want is to make the Lojban word "selcumki"
simply so we can comfortably use the Engl;ish usage as an observative, even
though selcumki may not have a legit English translation.


Thus I do not claim that ALL expressions without an x1 are observatives, nor
all expressions with x1 moved away from the head position.  But that is the
NORMAL stylistic interpreatation of a headless main bridi.  The 'reason' it
is significant enough to give it a separate name is that one of the few
recognized principles of Lojban sylistics ius that the thing at the beginning
of the sentences gets an inherent emphasis, and by eliminating x1 (as opposed
to other places) yoyu are 1) emphasizing the selbri itself which is now
located at the head - i.e. focussing on the relationship rather than on one
of the places thereof (which in itself seems like a particularly Lojbanic
thing to do), and 2) focussing attention on the fact that you HAVE omitted
x1 (somethintg a bit harder to focus on for the non-x1 places), thereby
suggesting that there is a REASON.  The reason thatmay be most common in
in-person comm8unication is that the listener can observe x1 for him/her-self,
hence the continued use of the term observative.

lojbab