Date:  Thu, 20 Nov 1997 15:04:39 -0500 (EST)
Message-Id: <199711202004.PAA15507@locke.ccil.org>
Reply-To: And Rosta <a.rosta@UCLAN.AC.UK>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: And Rosta <a.rosta@UCLAN.AC.UK>
Organization: University of Central Lancashire
Subject:      Re: do all nu's happen?
X-To:         LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
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X-From-Space-Date: Thu Nov 20 15:04:41 1997
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Lee Daniel Crocker to Jorge:
> > And:
> >>I don't see why du`u can't serve for these imaginable events.
> >>True a du`u is not an imaginable event, but it is easy to
> >>define denpa as "x1 waits for x2 [du`u] to become the case",
> >>whereas I can't easily think of a good definition of denpa
> >>is x2 can be an imaginary event. Maybe "X1 waits for x2 to
> >>become actual".
> >
> > I think you are convincing me (again!) that you're right.
> > But it is not only intentional gismu that would be affected.
> > Consider for example [cfari, fasnu, etc.]...
>
> I can see the confusion, but I'm not sure I like And's
> particular solution (using du'u).  Why not simply leave {nu}
> as a possibly-fictional event, and when necessary, add a
> {poi fasnu} now and then.  True, that makes quantification
> awkward, but we can move that to a {fasnu} predicate as well:
>
>   {le nu mi bajra noi re fasnu...} "The possibly-fictional
>   event(s) of my running (which-incidentally actually happened
>   twice)..."
>
> If that makes {nu do gerku} true if I can even imagine your
> being a dog, then sobeit: that's the nature of abstraction.
> We can still talk about non-abstract {fasnu}, so why cripple
> {nu} with the burden of reality?

If think that the official story, to the extent that there is
one, would be as follows. Both {nu} and {fasnu} mean "potential
event", just as {gerku} means "potential dog". So your solution
doesn't work, but nonetheless there may not be a problem.
The sumti of a selbri are not necessarily all drawn from the
locally-real world. To be explicit about whether or not they
are, you have to use a CAhA. Some predicates, such as, say,
nenri ("in") would require that all their sumti come from the
same world. But some predicates, such as djica, nelci, denpa,
troci etc. etc. allow that their sumti can come from different
worlds. So "da (ca`a) denpu lo (ka`e) nu..." means "In some
world w1, Ex, and in some world, Ey, x waits for y". So y DOES
happen, but not necessarily in the world in which x waits. "Denpa"
would therefore mean something like "x1 in world w1 waits in the
hope that event x2, which exists in some world though not
necessarily w1, will exist in world w1".

Whether logical problems remain lurking in this, I am not sure.
(There are certainly some things I don't understand, such as
why CAhA modifies the selbri rather than the sumti.)

I would still maintain that my proposal to use instead of
"denpa" a related word meaning "x1 waits in the hope that x2
(du`u) will become the case (and likewise for similar predicates)
is superior. But nonetheless there are predicates such as
"pixra" (picture), where the meaning does not seem to imply
an embedded proposition, yet the sumti do not need to come
from the same world, so it does still seem that something like
the predicates-straddling-possible-worlds story is required
in some cases.

--And