[lojban] Re: Japanese has no subjunctive??

["Craig" <ragnarok@pobox.com>]

>>>     My wife reports that subjunctive grammar, e.g. if I had studied,
>>>     I would have done better on the test, are very difficult, since
>>>     none of this grammar is found in Japanese.
>>>
>>> If this is true, and I find it unlikely, how do the Japanese talk
>>> about subjunctives?  Or do they simply (and I find this
>>> unimaginable) not do so?

>>Context is all.  See the Chinese example in
>>the Red Book, Chapter 13, examples 12.5 to 12.7
>>(http://www.lojban.org/publications/reference_grammar/chapter13.html#e12d5
)

How very odd. I had some text here that didn't go through.

Here it is again:

Notice that English fails to use a present subjunctive construction in many
cases; the example above, for instance, is a past subjunctive. A present
analogue might be "If I studied, I would do better on the test" - but it is
common to replace this with "If I study, I will do better on the test".

Also, consider the Spanish sentence "Busco una mujer que sea guapa". It
means "I'm looking for a woman who is beautiful", but because the
subjunctive "sea" is used rather than the indicative "es", it indicates that
there is not a specific woman. "Busco una mujer que es guapa" would be a
(rather wordy) way of saying that there is a woman I am looking for and that
she is beautiful. (Notice how elegantly Spanish handles the old Lojban
argument about "Any"!) This is a use of the subjunctive for which there is
no parallel in English. We have to guess from context whether "I'm looking
for a woman who is beautiful" means that there is a specific woman I seek or
not.

 -- .kreig.daniyl.

"Are we adjorned? Or just completely ignoring order?"
 -Jordan DeLong

ragnarok@pobox.com
teucer@bnomic.org