From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Fri Apr 08 16:22:08 2005 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Fri, 08 Apr 2005 16:22:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.44) id 1DK2nX-00080D-3Q for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Fri, 08 Apr 2005 16:21:59 -0700 Received: from rlpowell by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.44) id 1DK2nX-000806-1C for lojban-list@lojban.org; Fri, 08 Apr 2005 16:21:59 -0700 Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 16:21:59 -0700 To: lojban-list@lojban.org Subject: [lojban] Re: Denoting counterfactual sentences in Lojban? Message-ID: <20050408232158.GQ26545@chain.digitalkingdom.org> Mail-Followup-To: lojban-list@lojban.org References: <20050408204144.GC26545@chain.digitalkingdom.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6+20040907i From: Robin Lee Powell X-archive-position: 9796 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list On Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 05:54:33PM -0400, Ben Goertzel wrote: > Hopefully someone on this list can clear things up for me. I have > one significant question -- how to represent hypothetical > sentences da'i, or put it in an abstraction; all abstractions are technically non-veridical. > First, consider Exercise 7, part 2: > > "Susan assumes that Zhang knows that Susan is late." la .susan. sruma lo du'u la .zang. djuno lo du'u la .susan. lerci > The translation given in the answer key is: > > .i la suzyn. sruma lenu la jan. djuno lenu lerci fa lenu la suzyn. > klama Whether to use nu or du'u is stylistic, for the most part, in this case. > Now, this is OK but personally I find it a bit annoying. I found > myself wanting to do instead something like > > .i lenu la suzyn. klama cu lerci ("The event of Susan coming is late") > .i la jan jimpe go'i ("Zhang knows the previous.") > .i la suzyn. sruma lenu go'i ("Susan assumes the previous.") > > or else replacing the last of the three sentences with You're certainly welcome to if you like. It seems obnoxiously verbose to me, however. > .i ra srumo lenu go'i (using "ra" to refer to "Susan", pretty > obviously in context) Use "sy" to refer to Susan. > However, I don't yet know how to mark the second utterance in this > chain as hypothetical, so that the listener knows I don't really > believe Zhang knows the previous, I'm just saying that Susan > assumes so. IN other words, I want to say > > .i la jan HYP jimpe go'i ("Zhang knows the previous.") da'i Alos pe'i, ti'a, .ia. Probably some others. > I don't like > > .i la lojban HYP mintu le glibau > > because this is a posited equivalence between two entities of > different types, it seems semantically incorrect even though it > may (?) be syntactically allowable. You mean because it equates a cmene and a lujvo? It doesn't matter; they are both names, because of la. It's the referents that matter. gliban, btw. -Robin -- http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** http://www.lojban.org/ Reason #237 To Learn Lojban: "Homonyms: Their Grate!" Proud Supporter of the Singularity Institute - http://singinst.org/