19.8. Attitude scope markers: FUhE/FUhO

The following cmavo are discussed in this section:

fu'e	FUhE	open attitudinal scope
fu'o	FUhO	close attitudinal scope

Lojban has a complex system of “attitudinals”, words which indicate the speaker's attitude to what is being said. The attitudinals include indicators of emotion, intensity markers, discursives (which show the structure of discourse), and evidentials (which indicate “how the speaker knows”). Most of these words belong to selma'o UI; the intensity markers belong to selma'o CAI for historical reasons, but the two selma'o are grammatically identical. The individual cmavo of UI and CAI are discussed in Chapter 13; only the rules for applying them in discourse are presented here.

Normally, an attitudinal applies to the preceding word only. However, if the preceding word is a structural cmavo which begins or ends a whole construction, then that whole construction is affected by the attitudinal:

Example 19.37.

mi	viska	le	blanu	.ia	zdani	[ku]
I	see	the	blue	[belief]	house.

I see the house, which I believe to be blue.

Example 19.38.

mi	viska	le	blanu	zdani	.ia	[ku]
I	see	the	blue	house	[belief].

I see the blue thing, which I believe to be a house.

Example 19.39.

mi	viska	le	.ia	blanu	zdani	[ku]
I	see	the	[belief]	blue	house

I see what I believe to be a blue house.

Example 19.40.

mi	viska	le	blanu	zdani	ku	.ia
I	see	(the	blue	house)		[belief]

I see what I believe to be a blue house.

An attitudinal meant to cover a whole sentence can be attached to the preceding i, expressed or understood:

Example 19.41.

[.i]	.ia	mi	viska	le	blanu	zdani
	[belief]	I	see	the	blue	house.

I believe I see a blue house.

or to an explicit vau placed at the end of a bridi.

Likewise, an attitudinal meant to cover a whole paragraph can be attached to ni'o or no'i. An attitudinal at the beginning of a text applies to the whole text.

However, sometimes it is necessary to be more specific about the range of one or more attitudinals, particularly if the range crosses the boundaries of standard Lojban syntactic constructions. The cmavo fu'e (of selma'o FUhE) and fu'o (of selma'o FUhO) provide explicit scope markers. Placing fu'e in front of an attitudinal disconnects it from what precedes it, and instead says that it applies to all following words until further notice. The notice is given by fu'o, which can appear anywhere and cancels all in-force attitudinals. For example:

Example 19.42.

mi	viska	le	fu'e	.ia	blanu	zdani	fu'o	ponse
I	see	the	[start]	[belief]	blue	house	[end]	possessor

I see the owner of what I believe to be a blue house.

Here, only the blanu zdani portion of the three-part tanru blanu zdani ponse is marked as a belief of the speaker. Naturally, the attitudinal scope markers do not affect the rules for interpreting multi-part tanru: blanu zdani groups first because tanru group from left to right unless overridden with ke or bo.

Other attitudinals of more local scope can appear after attitudinals marked by FUhE; these attitudinals are added to the globally active attitudinals rather than superseding them.