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Re: [lojban] Semantics of modals


On Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 8:20 PM, Dmitry Kourmyshov <dmitry.kourmyshov@gmail.com> wrote:

M1. Modals add additional places to predicate, creating new predicate related to basic, but with different place-structure:
 
M2. Modals introduce additional predicates, linked to the main one... somehow.

Both are essentially correct. 

(1) A viska B se pi'o C
(2) A viska B .i jo'u A pilno C lo nu A viska B

Both (1) and (2) express basically the same relationship between three things, A, B and C, we could call it "broda": "A broda B C".
(2) is just a more expanded version than (1) in explaining what "broda" means, one that doesn't use "pi'o".  

(By the way, am I right in understanding what only those modals which have short BAI form could be used in connectives?)

All tags (I don't call them "modals" because most of them have nothing to do with modality) can be used as connectives, not just BAIs, although the meaning for some of them is unclear (e.g. ".i bau bo")
 
There could be third alternative, or at least, additional factor to consider that a recent discussion on #lojban touched. If multiple modals are present in the same statement, then the order of their appearance could matter, as they modify the main predicate one-by-one, creating scopes:

Of course, but even under M1, when scope matters you still have to take it into consideration when explaining what relationship the new extended predicate "broda" expresses.

It should be pointed out that there is no automatic one-rule-fits-all method of expanding tags, at least until we figure out what the "true" underlying predicate for each tag should be, 

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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