Re: UI for 'possible' (was: Re: [lojban] Bible translation style question)

["Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <lojbab@lojban.org>]

At 10:30 AM 2/9/02 -0500, pycyn@aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 2/8/2002 9:16:20 PM Central Standard Time, 
> jjllambias@hotmail.com writes:
> > I don't think they can be used for tautology or contradiction.
> > {je'u broda} is false, not true, when broda is false.
> > {xukau broda} is the tautology. "Whether or nor broda" is true
> > whether or not "broda" is true. Pity you can't say "Whetherever
> > broda" in English.
>
> Well, you can say "whetherever" with just the meaning you want "whichever 
> of them".  It's marked obsolete, but it looks worth reviving.  For the 
> rest, we've obviously read the cmavo listing on {je'u} differently -- and 
> I have to admit that your reading makes more practical sense (except, 
> perhaps, for a logical language). {da'inai} clearly won't work for that 
> usage.  But {xukau brode} is an indirect question, so not even close to a 
> tautology marker.  I know that ther has been a lot of fiddling with {kau}, 
> but none of the moves would seem to justify this particular step. Expatiate.

I believe (but heck it's been a lot of years) that the intent with je'u 
(whether this is consistent with anyone's usage) was to cover the 
equivalent of several English phrases that discursively refer to the truth 
of a sentence.  These are usages like "truly", "clearly", "obviously" and 
some longer phrasings.  I don't think they refer to a possible world, and 
hence are distinct from da'i.  The closer equivalences I think would be to 
the evidential/discursive for assumption as well as ju'o for a more emotive 
indicator of truth, but je'u was intended for cases which were neither 
evidential nor emotive.

It works, for example, as the discursive referral to truth of a proposition 
in a compound logical proposition.  A conditional is of course true when 
both components are true, hence .ije would be clearest logically.  But if 
for rhetorical reasons we use .inaja conditional, the discursive clarifies 
why the conditional is true, that we are not relying on the falseness of 
the antecedent to make the conditional true.  je'unai has similar usage to 
discursively indicate the known falseness of a proposition where that 
falseness is incidental (again, the antecedent of a conditional).

lojbab
--
lojbab                                             lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
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