[lojban-beginners] Re: di'e gimsnu be zo xanka, was Re: the black hole of keyworditis

["Jorge Llambías" <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On 1/2/08, Michael Turniansky <mturniansky@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Closer to the first.  It is a condition without which ko'a would not be
> nervous, but while the nervousness is in the present, the event may or may
> not be.  Consider:
>
> Today, Mary is nervous about  having cancer, under conditions of seeing the
> doctor.
>
> Her current mental state?  Unknown.

She is now nervous but maybe not?

I'm not convinced that's how "under conditions" places are supposed to
work. For me, if we are told {la meris nau ca'a xanka lo nu ka'e kenra my
kei da} then we are definitely being told that her mental state now is
one of nervousness, and that the possibility of her having cancer is what
is making her nervous now, and that information we are given would not
be changed if "da" was made more explicit or less.

> Can we tell if she has gone to the
> doctor, or will be going to see the doctor tomorrow, or ever? No.  But we
> might be using this sentence to explain why Mary HASN'T gone to a doctor in
> 20 years, because she might have cancer.  As long as she doesn't go, she
> isn't worried about the possibility (blissful ignorance).

But then you don't agree after all with my characterization of ko'a
and ko'e in {ko'a nau ca'a xanka ko'e ko'i}. You are saying that as
long as ko'i does not obtain, we don't claim that ko'e is actually
making ko'a nervous at all. It's just the potentiality of her being
nervous that is claimed to be actual and current.

> > If it's a necessary condition for ko'a being nervous, then how
> > is x3 different from x2? Why do we need to split that which
> > is making ko'a nervous into two separate bits?
>
> Hey, I don't know.  Why do we have to split something that is known (djuno)
> into a fact (x2) and a subject (x3)?   I dind't make up this language :-)

The accompanying subject places to some fact places are strange,
mostly because it seems to be random when they appear (djuno, krici,
etc.) and when not (birti, xusra, etc). But if all fact places had an
accompanying subject place, the meaning at least would be clear. The
problem there for me is mainly the inconsistency, we need to
remember which of the two classes each fact-gismu belongs to.

In the case of "under conditions" we have both an inconsistency (why
is it there for {xanka} but not for {terpa}?) but also a difficulty in figuring
out the semantics, as it seems to involve potentiality in some
roundabout way.

> (reminder to everyone, I'm not in any way an "official" lojbanist, so
> nothing I say should be treated as received truth.  This is jsut my own
> understanding of the gismu).

Me too.

mu'o mi'e xorxes