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Re: [lojban] Revising mu'ei and CAhA once again. Possible worlds.

la gleki, On 31/08/2012 17:48:

On Tuesday, August 14, 2012 10:34:20 PM UTC+4, And Rosta wrote:

    Gleki Arxokuna, On 14/08/2012 18:23:
     > I wish Robin started using {mu'ei} again but
     > it's really when usage decides. May be human brain just doesn't want
     > to deal with A-level at such level of precision. May be {ka'e/na
     > ka'e/ka'ei/bia'i} or even {bi'ai} is enough.

    The evidence of natural language is to the contrary. The could/probably/would contrast is the some/most/all contrast.

     > The use of {da'i} is interesting. For a logical language it's
     > completely deplorable, because there's a complete mismatch between
     > the lexicosyntactic form and the logical form, and no explicit rule
     > about how to get from one to the other -- it works by mere stipulated
     > magic. But it caught on among those impatient to be actively using
     > the language, and nicely illustrated the fundamental incompatibility
     > between a loglang and a language governed by the principle of "let
     > usage decide".
     >
     > May be we can determine the most common usage of {da'i} and redefine
     > it from the point of view of A/M/F-level scheme? May be we should
     > perform analysis of Lojban corpus and tatoeba sentences?

    {da'i} is in UI, isn't it? So it doesn't have the right grammatical properties.

It is in UI. If I "discovered" A and F levels why not bind {da'i} to A-level i.e. make it a synonym of {ka'e} but without changing the grammar and selmaho
and {da'inai} would be "equal" to {ca'a}.


Because {da'i} should be a marker of mood -- of hypothetical, unassertive mood; whereas, ka'e is a modal of possibility. Modals involve quantification over possible states of affairs of various sorts. Moods involve a relation between the speaker and the proposition -- the speaker asserts p to be true, the speaker wishes p were true, the speaker entertains the idea of p, the speaker asks whether p is true, and so forth.

(There's no harm in marking the protasis and/or apodosis of a conditional with da'i, but da'i doesn't generate conditional semantics.)

--And.

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