Subject: Re: UI for 'possible' (was: Re: [lojban] Bible translation style question)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002 11:09:12 EST

In a message dated 2/8/2002 6:47:20 AM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> > > It is a metalinguistic comment on the main bridi, and in this case
> it
> > > tells you that that bridi is not being claimed, but it is still
> the
> > > topic of discussion.
> > >
> >
> > But that is not what {mi pacna le du'u ko'a klama} means.
> 
> No, but it's the meaning of 'mi pacna le du'u kau/kau'u ko'a klama' or
> 'le du'u ko'a klama zo'u mi pacna le du'u ko'a klama'.
> 

Butmthat was not what you gave as an explication (and I am not sure that it 
IS what these expressions mean either).

<> What you want is
> for {sei pacna} to be an epistemic particle: "my evidence for the
claim {ko'a
> klama} is my hope that it be true" (forcing {ko'a klama} into retro
future
> tense, I suppose).

I'm not sure what 'retro future tense' is, but the 'ko'a klama' in our
sentence could be in any tense>

English "will have -N" -- a time before some future time. The {ko'a klama} 
can't be in just any tense, since hoping requires that the object of the hope 
not yet be established one way or the other. The event may be in any 
temporal relation to utterance, but, since its occurrence is not yet known, 
it is safest to use the indeterminate form. 

<> That does seem plausible, maybe the most plausible
> reading for the {ko'a klama i mi pacna la'e di'u} version -- with
appropriate
> play-down of the second part, though the epistemic ground is always
a
> (usually minor) potential point of contention.

Is an epistemic particle the same as an evidential, like 'ti'e',
'ka'u', etc.? I think that the evidentials could be treated in the
same way, and I can see how I could think of 'possibly' as an
evidential, so I'll accept that.>

Yes, but I am not sure that "possibly" can be taken as an evidential, except 
in a rather extended sense ("I can tell it is not contradictory" or some 
such). It would still be a part of the {i} conjoined forms in logical 
reading.

<. 'sei cumki' would be useless,
> > since the sentence claims the main bridi, and anything true is also
> > possible.

But, of course, if the main bridi is false, it may still be possible -- and 
that is the usual place for "possibly" anyhow. So the {i} reading makes a 
lot of sense.

<> Likewise, I feel strongly that {da'i} ought not alter truth
conditions;
> it should indicate that the speaker is not claiming the proposition
> within its scope to be true.

When 'da'i's scope is the main bridi, then it would be altering truth
conditions, since the normal assuption is that the main bridi is true.
I stuck to 'da'i' and 'po'o' because they are 'pure' UI, but there's
also the obvious case of 'je'unai', which clearly doesn't claim the
bridi it is attached to and is every bit as metalinguistic as 'li'a',
'sa'e', etc.>

Is there a confusion here about truth conditions and truth? The truth 
conditions for a sentence with {da'i} in it remain the same, but it is no 
longer claimed that they hold; rather {da'i} indicates that they are being 
used to define an alternate world. 
I am not sure that {li'a} and {sa'e} should be called metalinguistic, though 
I suppose the case can be made -- complete with the minor arguments about 
whther it really is clear or precise. Has anybody figure out a way to use 
{je'unai} (or even {je'u} -- now there is a useless metalinguistic form, 
surely) meaningfully -- aside from their value as 1 -place logical 
connectives for tautology and contradiction?