Proposal: Redefine attitudinal default scope as ambiguous

The status quo

The CLL states that attitudinals and UI-cmavo always bind to the previous lexical unit. For example, la .djan. cu klama iu (cu now required by current grammar) specifically means that it is the coming (lo ka klama) that inspires the "love" emotion of iu, and not the entire sentence (lo du'u la .djan. cu klama). The current cleanest way of attaching UI-cmavo to the entire sentence is to put them first, e.g. iu la .djan. cu klama. The other way is to close the sentence with the appropriate famyma'o (la .djan. cu klama vau iu).

The problem

Attitudinals are often added as afterthoughts; in online chat systems in other languages, smileys are often attached to the end of sentences, rather than the beginning. It is often undesirable to announce "I am going to tell a joke" (zo'o) or "the following is sarcastic" (xo'o) before making a joke or sarcastic comment. Thus the "correct" prescribed way of doing that is to use famyma'o like vau to close sentences before adding the attitudinals. However, this is often forgotten in usage, and vau is sometimes insufficient to close sentences completely, and is sometimes even ungrammatical. I go more in-depth on the problems with this on my zo i'au ki'a page.

The proposal

Attitudinals and other UI-cmavo (like xu) are now considered by default to be inherently ambiguous as to scope. It could bind to the last lexical unit, but could also apply to more units before that; in other words, all attitudinal groups have an implied fu'o, and its corresponding fu'e would be placed by context.

To allow the speaker to resolve this ambiguity, two new cmavo are to be proposed, in the new sub-selma'o UI8 ("attitudinal scope modifiers"). i'au, as in my previous proposal, binds an attitudinal group to the sentence. (Under this proposal, I expect it to be used a lot less often than under my previous proposal, as the usual contextual ambiguity resolution to afterthought attitudinals is, generally, "the sentence or statement". i'au might still find occasional use when it is important to explicitly define the scope.) ji'au is a new cmavo that will bind an attitudinal group to the last lexical unit, as UI-cmavo are originally defined to do. So now to specifically state and emphasize that it is lo ka klama that inspires the iu emotion, you say la .djan. cu klama ji'au iu

Expected advantages

• This proposal better reflects current usage, as people often forget to close their sentences, or close them improperly, before adding afterthought attitudinals. Even ro lo ma'a datka has this problem (is the rebla itself the inspiration for ua?), and adding the appropriate vau or i'au would completely ruin the meter of the song.
• There has been some opposition against my push to make i'au the prescribed way of attaching afterthought attitudinals to Lojbanists of all levels, and especially against my push to make it monosyllabic to better serve this purpose. This proposal, by making the "default" scope being dependent on context, will make it unnecessary for any new cmavo to be so strongly prescribed for general conversational use; i'au and ji'au will now only be used when it is important to explicitly define the scope of an attitudinal or UI-cmavo group.