On Sun, Aug 12, 2012 at 4:10 PM, Bob LeChevalier, President andhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrealis_mood
Founder - LLG <lojbab@lojban.org> wrote:
>
> (by my understandiong, "irrealis" means
> that the attitudinal is irrelevant to the truth-functional value of the
> proposition)
"Irrealis moods are the main set of grammatical moods that indicate
that a certain situation or action is not known to have happened as
the speaker is talking."
Some UIs (e.g. ".a'o", "la'a", "da'i", "xu") give a proposition an
irrealis mood, which means that it is not being claimed by the speaker
as something known to have happened:
.a'o la djan pu tolcri lo jaspu be dy
"Hopefully, John found his passport."
la'a la djan pu tolcri lo jaspu be dy
"Probably, John found his passport."
da'i la djan pu tolcri lo jaspu be dy
"Let's assume John found his passport."
xu la djan pu tolcri lo jaspu be dy
"Did John find his passport."
Those are not claims that John did find his passport. The speaker
doesn't know whether he did or not, that's why an irrealis marker is
used.
It should be pointed out that most UIs are not used for emotional
> Emotions are NOT "logical", nor truth-functional. Most people probably
> prefer it that way, even if it makes them sometimes seem a bit delusional.
> So long as we can clearly distinguish between the claim and the emotional
> _expression_, this causes no problem in communication.
_expression_, although some of them can probably be turned into
expressions of emotion by adding "ro'i".