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



The point is that it is not a discursive or even an evidential, but something with a logical force.


From: John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com>
To: "lojban@googlegroups.com" <lojban@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Friday, August 31, 2012 6:05 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] Revising mu'ei and CAhA once again. Possible worlds.

Using {da'i} with truth-functional connectives is, of course, dissonant, since a {da'i} sentence has no truth value.  But we do allow this is some other cases, so perhaps this is no harm.  While it is true that "I suppose" and the like don't generate conditionals in a direct way, the usual reasons for such suppositions is to consider what would happen if the supposition were true.  This is a longer task than can be handled in a simple conditional, although the results can be summarized in one -- and usually is.  Hence the paragraph marker suggestion (on analogy with the inset or boxing conventions of ordinary logic for reductio and conditional proof).



From: And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Friday, August 31, 2012 2:39 PM
Subject: 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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