From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Sat Apr 09 07:39:35 2005 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Sat, 09 Apr 2005 07:39:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.44) id 1DKH7L-0005QA-Ih for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Sat, 09 Apr 2005 07:39:23 -0700 Received: from wproxy.gmail.com ([64.233.184.197]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.44) id 1DKH7J-0005PL-EP for lojban-list@lojban.org; Sat, 09 Apr 2005 07:39:23 -0700 Received: by wproxy.gmail.com with SMTP id 68so1188482wri for ; Sat, 09 Apr 2005 07:38:50 -0700 (PDT) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:reply-to:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:references; b=fF/A/HBJC4aKe51KRJz1X1cVgtxzwuxFvOYTh5Wco3GGRFil8TCEVrwUvSxNY+U1TfvqlLwn6zT84ypKH5vlwNjZLE0OVCllmPEh0rb94JDCpyF3kyh9bwsnNE3sD6q3ycVLxl6AWYaJBqVxdfDl63h4xnGDvB3wXLH8pZp0LUo= Received: by 10.54.15.51 with SMTP id 51mr531939wro; Sat, 09 Apr 2005 07:38:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.54.69.3 with HTTP; Sat, 9 Apr 2005 07:38:49 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <925d175605040907382c027fad@mail.gmail.com> Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 11:38:49 -0300 From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jorge_Llamb=EDas?= To: lojban-list@lojban.org Subject: [lojban] Re: Denoting counterfactual sentences in Lojban? In-Reply-To: <20050409024151.72370.qmail@web81303.mail.yahoo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by Ecartis References: <20050409024151.72370.qmail@web81303.mail.yahoo.com> X-Spam-Score: -2.5 (--) X-archive-position: 9805 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: jjllambias@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list On Apr 8, 2005 11:41 PM, John E Clifford wrote: > --- Jorge Llambías wrote: > > > You can also use {ju'a nai} to mark something > > as a non-assertion: > > I'm not sure what this would mean:"I don't state" > as an evidential. So little evidence that I > don't really want to put it forth at all? But it > still seems to be an assertion. I see two issues here. 1) Is {ju'a} an evidential {sei lo na se cusku cu jicmu} "I'm not telling what the evidence for what I'm saying is", as the CLL description suggests, or is it an illocutionary force indicator {sei mi xusra} "I assert", as the keyword definition suggests? 2) Is it possible to utter a non-subordinate bridi and not assert it? Issue (1) is one of definition: What is more useful? What was intended by the FFs? What do people really use it for? CLL clearly classifies it as an evidential. To me it makes more sense to contrast "I state" with "I ask" and "I command" than with sources of evidence, and I think that even though assertion is the default illocutionary force of an otherwise unmarked utterance it is still useful to have an explicit indicator. Issue (2) as posited has an obvious answer: questions and commands can be non-assertive main bridi utterances. But is it possible for a main bridi to have no illocutionary force at all? That's more tricky, especially because we don't really have a complete catalogue of possible illocutionary forces. But in principle I don't see any impediment in offering a sentence marked explicitly as a non-assertion, possibly to set a topic for example. Maybe that is some other kind of illocutionary force. mu'o mi'e xorxes