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Re: [lojban] conditionals in Lojban
At 06:40 PM 04/22/2001 +0000, Jorge Llambias wrote:
(BTW, Lojban does not even have
a clear gismu for "x1 expresses attitude x2", maybe {jarco}?)
Not a gismu, but an obvious tanru/lujvo: cinmo cusku or cinmo jarco
As for the converse, it may be true that we sometimes use
some attitudinals to make assertions. There seem to be two
resons for this. On the one hand, some attitudinals are not
so useful to express attitudes. I can understand what a bare
{oi} means, or a bare {ui}, or a bare {u'i}, and those are
always used attitudinally, but when would you express an
attitude of obligation, for example? What does a bare {ei}
indicate?
That expression I get on my face when Nora or Shawn tells me to go do the
Lojban taxes. Usually in English it is accompanied by a groan, or in
Lojban with an .oi, but it needn't be. When I was younger I would often do
things solely from a sense of obligation, and not necessarily with a
feeling of complaint.
Or a bare {ai}?
.ai.au.ai.au mi gunka klama vau
cu'u loi ze toryre'a
This one I often use at the same time I need to use a bare ".ei". In
English, I say "I will".
On the other hand, there is no corresponding gismu to do the job.
Not a gismu, because there is a tense component to intent. mi ba gasnu
conveys intent.
{bilga} has a
much more restricted field of application than {ei},
and I can't get any meaning out of {ei do klama le zarci}
other than "you should go to the market".
I'm not sure I get any sense out of ei unless the speaker has a sumti or
modal role in the bridi.
{ei} to me means
something like "in an ideal world, this happens".
>1' ko'a pu bilga le nu zukte
Is that "he had to do it" or "he should have done it"?
What is the difference? The only other meaning I can associate with the
former is one based on se bapli instead of bilga.
lojbab
--
lojbab lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org