| In a message dated 6/15/2001 3:11:38 PM Central Daylight Time,
rob@twcny.rr.com writes: Please clarify - why is a'o still considered inadequate? Because people want Well, the "at the beginning of a sentence" part is not in the Book; there it is propositional attitude indicator wherever it occurs. And, the Book is less than pelucid on what a propositional attitude indicator does: the examples given differ on almost all the crucial features. The Book makes it relatively clear that {a'o mi klama le zarci} (and {mi a'o klama le zarci} and {mi klama a'o le zarci} and {mi klama le zarci a'o}) expresses a hope that I go to the store (with slightly different emphases in the various cases, answering to different possibilities in context, we assume). It does not assert that I go to the store; indeed, it presupposes that I do not yet know whether I go to the store. At least some Lojbanist have used this sentence or at least some of the variants to both assert that I do go to the store and to express a hope for some unspecified event possibly consequent upon that trip -- or even just a conswquent feeling of hopefulness, without a discernible object. Whether or not this latter reading is legitmate now, it clearly represents a real situation and one which should, therefore, have a Lojban _expression_. It does not under the present rules. It has not yet been clearly dealt with by the reform suggestions. That is the problem. |