[lojban-beginners] Re: ganai do djica lo nu terpa gi ko terpa

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On 1/17/06, Adam COOPER <adamgarrigus@gmail.com> wrote:
> Does the issue go away if you replace forethought with afterthought
> connectives?
> {ko terpa i ja nai bo do djica lo nu do terpa}

I don't think it should make a difference. A prenex has scope over
JA-connected sentences, so if {ko} has scope over forethought
connectives it should also have it over afterthought. I think it makes
more sense for it to scope only over its localmost bridi, but it
may not always be easy to determine what that is.

> If Yanis's translation "If you want to fear, then fear" is the desired
> outcome, er, I posit that imperatives in the apodosis ("'then' clause") of
> conditional sentences don't make logical sense. Hence in Lojban one would
> prefer {ga nai do djica lo nu do terpa gi mi mutce stidi lo nu do terpa}

But I'm not sure that works either. The speaker is actually making
a suggestion, not just describing a situation. "I suggest that, if you
want to fear then go ahead and fear", and not "either you don't
want to fear, or I suggest that you fear, or both". In a possible worlds
formalism it would go something like: "I suggest that in every world
in which you want to fear, you fear". The subclause {mi mutce stidi
lo nu do terpa} does not have a defined truth value.

mu'o mi'e xorxes