From araizen@newmail.net Wed Jan 30 14:29:48 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: araizen@newmail.net X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_1_3); 30 Jan 2002 22:29:48 -0000 Received: (qmail 52871 invoked from network); 30 Jan 2002 22:29:48 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.167) by m8.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 30 Jan 2002 22:29:48 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO sphere.barak.net.il) (212.150.48.98) by mta1.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 30 Jan 2002 22:29:47 -0000 Received: from out.newmail.net ([10.10.11.10]) by sphere.barak.net.il (InterMail vK.4.03.00.00 201-232-121 license 5444ddd44659357c6c93343e0ce38507) with SMTP id <20020130222818.VYBW2403.sphere@out.newmail.net> for ; Thu, 31 Jan 2002 00:28:18 +0200 Received: from default ([62.0.180.245]) by out.newmail.net ; Thu, 31 Jan 2002 00:30:54 +0200 Message-ID: <068a01c1a9dd$b800a0c0$90b4003e@default> To: References: Subject: UI for 'possible' (was: Re: [lojban] Bible translation style question) Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2002 00:29:43 +0200 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2314.1300 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 From: "Adam Raizen" X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=3063669 X-Yahoo-Profile: araizen X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 13109 la xorxes. cusku di'e > la djan cusku di'e > > >People surely don't write "cumki fa le nu..." because it is > >short, but rather because they are calquing "It is necessary that ..." > > "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. So, in answer to the question 'what are the possibilities?' 'cumki fa le nu mi klama le zarci' is a good answer, but in answer to the question 'do you think you'll go?' 'cumki fa le nu mi klama' is off-focus. I would say 'sei cumki mi klama'. I guess that we could easily force 'cumki fa le nu mi klama' to be a statement about going, since all we have to do is ignore the first 4 words, but I would prefer to use the structure that is meant, without glorking. I had been avoiding 'sei' because of its use in quotation to mark who said something, but I think it plays too vital a function to be ignored in other cases, so I'll start saying 'seisa'a' in quotes in order to show who is quoted. Of course, one might argue that 'possible' is a common enough concept that it should have its own single-word UI, but that's a different story (and it looks like we're stuck with what we have). You could use just use 'ru'e' by itself if need be (supported from trivalent logic). mu'o mi'e .adam.