From xod@sixgirls.org Wed Jan 30 14:37:25 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: xod@reva.sixgirls.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_1_3); 30 Jan 2002 22:37:25 -0000 Received: (qmail 65320 invoked from network); 30 Jan 2002 22:37:25 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.172) by m9.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 30 Jan 2002 22:37:25 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO reva.sixgirls.org) (216.27.131.50) by mta2.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 30 Jan 2002 22:37:24 -0000 Received: from localhost (localhost [[UNIX: localhost]]) by reva.sixgirls.org (8.11.6+3.4W/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g0UMbMR28899 for ; Wed, 30 Jan 2002 17:37:22 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 17:37:21 -0500 (EST) To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: UI for 'possible' (was: Re: [lojban] Bible translation style question) In-Reply-To: <068a01c1a9dd$b800a0c0$90b4003e@default> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII From: Invent Yourself X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=1138703 X-Yahoo-Profile: throwing_back_the_apple On Thu, 31 Jan 2002, Adam Raizen wrote: > la xorxes. cusku di'e > > > la djan cusku di'e > > > > >People surely don't write "cumki fa le nu..." because it is > > >short, but rather because they are calquing "It is necessary that > ..." > > > > "It is _possible_ that ...". I often wished there was a UI for > > that... > > The official answer, of course, is 'sei cumki'. Before anyone yells > that it's ugly or too long, I think it should be considered. It is > generally recognized (I think), that we *could* get by with many fewer > cmavo for many things, such as tenses. For example 'mi ba klama le > zarci' could be rephrased as 'le nu mi klama le zarci cu balvi'. I > don't think that the real reason such sentences are unsatisfactory is > that they're too long, in most cases the additional length is not so > much. Rather, I think that it's a matter of the focus of the two > sentences. We want to talk about a going and not about what's in the > future. In theory, all sentences could be 'expanded' into a 'logical' > form like this, with many additional super- and sub-sentences. Since > that would shift the focus of discussion, we have grammatical > shortcuts such as PU, BAI, and UI (in some cases); but since there can > potentially be a need for this with any selbrivla that can have > abstractions, there needs to be a general way to do it, which is > 'sei'. Any supersentence above the sentence of focus gets packed away > into a 'sei' clause. You're stepping close to the heresy that certain brivla can be represented with UI. Welcome! What do you think of ju'ocu'i? I think you're right that sei should be looked into more. > > So, in answer to the question 'what are the possibilities?' 'cumki fa > le nu mi klama le zarci' is a good answer, but in answer to the > question 'do you think you'll go?' 'cumki fa le nu mi klama' is > off-focus. I would say 'sei cumki mi klama'. I guess that we could > easily force 'cumki fa le nu mi klama' to be a statement about going, > since all we have to do is ignore the first 4 words, but I would > prefer to use the structure that is meant, without glorking. > > I had been avoiding 'sei' because of its use in quotation to mark who > said something, but I think it plays too vital a function to be > ignored in other cases, so I'll start saying 'seisa'a' in quotes in > order to show who is quoted. > > Of course, one might argue that 'possible' is a common enough concept > that it should have its own single-word UI, but that's a different > story (and it looks like we're stuck with what we have). You could use > just use 'ru'e' by itself if need be (supported from trivalent logic). Why ru'e and not cu'i? -- The tao that can be tar(1)ed is not the entire Tao. The path that can be specified is not the Full Path.