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Subject: RE: [lojban] Re: sticky hypothesis
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2002 01:40:48 +0100
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From: "And Rosta" <a.rosta@lycos.co.uk>
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Lionel:
> xorxes:
> > The kind of thing I'm thinking is that {ru'a} asks the listener
> > to consider what is said as if it were part of the real world,
> > whereas {da'i} marks it as not part of the real world and not to
> > be taken as such.
> > For example:
> >   ru'a la djan zvati la paris i ru'acu'i ju'o dy penmi la meris
> >   i ru'anai my zvati py
> >   Let's assume John is in Paris. In that case, surely he met Mary.
> >   She is there (independently of our hypothesis).
> >   da'i la djan zvati la paris i da'i ju'o dy penmi la meris
> >   i da'inai my zvati py
> >   John would be in Paris (but isn't). He would surely meet Mary.
> >   She is there.
> 
> So in this interpretation, {da'i} would be used for things I know
> false the moment I say it, and {ru'a} for things I don't know the truth
> value... this distinction coud indeed be useful in complex reasonning
> to give an hint to the reader on the forthcoming conclusion
> on the hypothesis validity.

I see da'i/ru'e as not having anything to do with what is or isn't
known to be true. Rather, I see {da'i} as simply tossing the idea
out, rather as if the sentence {da'i broda} were like the
sentence {da du'u broda} -- it is presented purely as a proposition
with no claim at all about whether it is true. {ru'e}, on the
other hand, says "this may or may not be true, but I'm going to
proceed as though it is true". On this understanding, {ru'e} is
correctly classified as an evidential. As for the classification
of {da'i} as a 'discursive', this is less meaningful, partly 
because 'discursive' has (afaik) no standard meaning in linguistics
and partly because it seems a bit of a dustbin category. Along
with another discursive, {xu}, it expresses illocutionary force,
but Jorge's interpretation of some attitudinals like {ei} and 
{au} do that too.

--And.