Date: Thu, 8 Dec 1994 00:40:49 -0500
From: Logical Language Group <lojbab>
Message-Id: <199412080540.AA24829@access3.digex.net>
To: i.alexander.bra0125@oasis.icl.co.uk
Subject: Re: TECH:  existential quantification
Cc: lojbab@access.digex.net, lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu
Status: RO

>But there are times when what we're talking about is something much less
>concrete - it is a generalisation which encompasses a wide range of possible
>events which can be described in the given way.  This commonly occurs with
>"modals" such as desire ({djica}), although not exclusively either way.
>If I say {mi djica le nu limna}, I may not have any particularly fixed ideas
>about whether to go in the morning or afternoon, to the beach or an indoor
>swimming pool, etc.
>
>The fact that Lojban turns what-is-desired into a sumti focuses attention
>on it as an identifiable object.  (The other treatments of modals I've seen
>handle it completely differently.)  I would like to be able to distinguish
>in a relatively straightforward manner between the concrete event "I swim
>(in the XYZ indoor swimming pool between 11:00 and 12:00 on Wednesday the
>7th of December etc.)" and the abstract event "I swim".

It sounds like you are merely talking about this opaque/non-opaque
dichotomy thhat we've been on about these last too-many weeks.  What ever
solution for opaque sumti we decide on, where lo or something else would
describe "the abstract event "I swim"", whereas teh concrete (i.e. specific)
event is "le".

lojbab