= Rather than continuing to try to ferret out what gleki has in mind, I will = try to lay out what I take to be Lojban's (and occasionally logic's) positi= on on part of the range of intensional propositional operators (modals, etc= .)

To begin the extensional, {ganai... gi ...} is the standard logical and Lojba= n "if ..., then ...", which is perfectly serviceable so long as no one trie= s to win points by pointing out that the antecedent ("if" clause) is in fac= t false or the consequent ("then" clause) true. When those fact= ors come into play, we have to move to something other than the present "real world" (the current array of functi= ons or relations assigning individuals to names, classes to properties and = so on -- not necessarily the present external world, but the one currently = under discussion or presentation), to "possible worlds" (functions -- or re= lations -- that do as the real world does but perhaps for different individ= uals and certainly different assignments in some cases). The details = of what these other sets of assignments are like is generally irrelevant to= using Lojban, we need only know that where we wander can eventually be pro= jected back onto the present world suitably marked as alternative. Fo= r the notions we are mainly be concerned with, the only systematic notion t= hat rises to practical importance is that the alternate assignments are "su= itably" like the present world -- say, roughly, as realistic as a novel in = some genre (which genre says something about how far afield we may roam). We may also want to specify, in some cases, just how the alte= rnatives are to differ from the present case.

The simplest way to move to an alternate world lo= gically is to postulate, suppose, a situation, which does not hold in the r= eal world (I'll skip the scare quotes). In English we can do this dir= ectly, by saying "Suppose/assume that" or the like, or by beginning an obvi= ous tale "Once upon a time, ..." or, rather more complexly, by starting a s= ubjunctive conditional "If I were to...,". The explicit Lojban equiva= lent of these moves is {da'i}, a free marker that indicates that the curren= t sentence sets up a world and all that follows (down to {da'i nai} or some= other convention) is to be about that world. In the casual way, {da'= i} is used with {ganai ... gi ...} to make the antecedent the establishing characteristic and the consequent the resulting situation (and the {da'inai} is omitted, with= some resulting confusion, some times). Note this world specification= tends to be rather weak, so specifying not one alternate assignment but ma= ny. So arguments can ensue about what happens in the hypothetical cas= e. some are relatively easy arguments to judge: "If I were to relaeas= e this pencil, it would fall" is clearly tied to the present situation and = thus assumes the worlds involved differ from the present one mainly in addi= ng that I release the pencil. On the other hand, "If all unicorns wer= e blue, My Pretty Little Uni would be topaz" doesn't have much to hang an a= rgument on (except maybe whether topaz is a shade of blue) and so matters c= an go on for a while.

Often, however, we are less concerned about what happens in a particular (sort of) alternate world as about whether such an alternate world exists at all (wi= thin the parameters we have set up in our present assignment for suit= able alternate worlds). Something is not the case, but is it possible= ? That is, in this way of thinking, is there a suitable world in whic= h it does occur? If there is, then it is possible, though not actual.= So, we can say, in Lojban {ka'e}. We also have its variants with {na= } and {nai}, to say there is not such alternative or the event might = not occur or even, combining them, that the event must occur (its non-occur= rence is in no suitable alternate world). Occasionally, we want to sa= y something more than that it is possible, but to stress either that it has= happened at least once, so may again {pu'i} or that it hasn't yet but stil= l might {nu'o} and {ca'a} which stresses that it is not merely possible but= not actual. These three are mainly rhetorical; they add nothing to the claim of possibility but merely help the argument along, on= e way or another (the mixture with tense -- another modal notion -- is inci= dental and generally a bad idea, though there are cases where the mixture m= akes important points).

Notice that, while I have talked about these= features in terms of alternative assignments (possible worlds, etc.), talk= in Lojban says nothing about these notions. Statements about possibi= lity could, for all the language shows (until crunchy cases turn up), be ju= st about this world (and, in the official reading of {ka'e}, "innately capa= ble", are. Ignoring this gloss will save a lot of headaches.). = Lojban does, for whatever reason, have a direct reference to alternate assi= gnments, in that they can counted off using {mu'ei} with a PA prefix. = In this way, {ka'e} has an equivalent in {su'omu'ei} and its dual in {romu= 'ei}. This also provides an expression for one form of "probably" without going through {lakne}and for other loose probabilistic = expressions. On the whole though, this bringing of worlds from the me= talanguage into the object language seems a bad idea. Better to make = do the usual notions (some probabilistic terms in CAhA would be nice, thoug= h).

That's enough for one round. Note, only modals of t= ruth have been touched on (well, tense, which is also a truth modality, has= been mentioned).

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