Re: Subjunctive?

[Pycyn@aol.com]

You're not just thinking English, except for thinking that the subjunctive is 
other than a grammatical category. The English (Latin, ...) subjunctives do 
a number of things, which are sorted out in Lojban to a number of cmavo. So, 
decide what you want to say and pick the appropriate device for doing it. 
Xorxes has, as usual, given a good starter list: for contrary-to-fact 
"conditionals" and past contemplated but undone actions (not, notice, a 
subjunctive even in English).

Lojban tenses (ca,pu, ba, and compounds) are best taken as strictly 
truth-functional and linear, though there are arguments about the linear part 
and that allows for some "subjunctives." But better not to rely on that 
reading. So, puba *might* mean along some future path from some past time, 
and thus probably contrary to fact along the real (for us now anyhow) future 
to that past, but it is better to take it as being along the actual future to 
that past and thus either before, at, or after the present in the real stream 
of time. The virtues of puba and bapu are just that they don't tell us how 
the event is related to now, which is sometimes useful, when we don't know 
exactly: "He will have arrived by morning" (and for all I know is arrived 
already), etc. Most of the other compounds mirror the needs of a language 
which has obligatory tense, so needs compounds to move about in a narrative, 
as Lojban does not -- or not nearly so often.
pc