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RE: [lojban] Denoting counterfactual sentences in Lojban?



Hi all,
 
Oops, in my previous email I said
 
---
 
 .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.") 
---
 
but the middle sentence shoulda been
 
.i la jan djuno go'i
 
"djuno" for "know" rather than "jimpe" for "understand" ...
 
(though I guess either one will really do given the context)
 
Sorry for my usual sloppiness ;-)
 
-- Ben G
 
 
 
or else replacing the last of the three sentences with
 
.i ra srumo lenu go'i (using "ra" to refer to "Susan", pretty obviously in context)
 
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.")
 
where HYP should be substituted by some appropriate cmavo that I haven't noticed in the "Lojban for Beginners" book yet....
 
Is there a cmavo like this?  What is it?  If not, what's the equivalent mechanism?
 
For a simpler example of the same issue, consider
 
"Ben does not believe Lojban is English"
 
which should be (?)
 
.i la lojban HYP mintu la glibau
.i la ben na sruma go'i
 
[the first sentence here leads to another confusion which is that lojban is a cmene, but I don't know a cmene for English -- glibau is a lujvo not a cmene...
 
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.
 
Comments, answers, etc.?
 
-- Ben Goertzel
 
 
 
 
 
 


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