From arosta@uclan.ac.uk Thu Jan 31 06:22:53 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: arosta@uclan.ac.uk X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_1_3); 31 Jan 2002 14:22:53 -0000 Received: (qmail 65188 invoked from network); 31 Jan 2002 14:22:50 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.171) by m11.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 31 Jan 2002 14:22:50 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO com1.uclan.ac.uk) (193.61.255.3) by mta3.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 31 Jan 2002 14:22:50 -0000 Received: from gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk by com1.uclan.ac.uk with SMTP (Mailer); Thu, 31 Jan 2002 13:56:37 +0000 Received: from DI1-Message_Server by gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk with Novell_GroupWise; Thu, 31 Jan 2002 14:22:28 +0000 Message-Id: X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise 5.5.2 Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2002 14:22:00 +0000 To: lojban Subject: UI for 'possible' (was: Re: [lojban] Bible translation style question) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline From: And Rosta X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=810630 X-Yahoo-Profile: andjamin X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 13122 Adam: #> "It is _possible_ that ...". I often wished there was a UI for #> that... # #The official answer, of course, is 'sei cumki'. Before anyone yells #that it's ugly or too long, I think it should be considered. It is #generally recognized (I think), that we *could* get by with many fewer #cmavo for many things, such as tenses. For example 'mi ba klama le #zarci' could be rephrased as 'le nu mi klama le zarci cu balvi'. I #don't think that the real reason such sentences are unsatisfactory is #that they're too long, in most cases the additional length is not so #much. Rather, I think that it's a matter of the focus of the two #sentences. We want to talk about a going and not about what's in the #future. In theory, all sentences could be 'expanded' into a 'logical' #form like this, with many additional super- and sub-sentences. Since #that would shift the focus of discussion, we have grammatical #shortcuts such as PU, BAI, and UI (in some cases); but since there can #potentially be a need for this with any selbrivla that can have #abstractions, there needs to be a general way to do it, which is #'sei'. Any supersentence above the sentence of focus gets packed away #into a 'sei' clause. I agree that "sei cumki" is the UI-like way to say "possibly". However, what you describe as 'shifting focus' is actually in some cases a shift also in truth conditions. The 'logical' way to defocalize superstru= cture would be to leave the logical structure in standard selbri + sumti form, an= d to indicate (de)focalization by means of UI. --And.