Subject: Re: [lojban] Subjunctives and worlds

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2002 19:11:27

la pycyn cusku di'e

>{mu'ei} makes explicit reference to possible world in the object language.
>Possible world are a useful matalanguage device for explicating some notion
>in the object langauge, but, when introduced into the object language, they
>tend to create more problems than they solve (identifying worlds -- and
>things in them -- or (perhaps worse) distinguishing them (Prior's "The
>non-diversity fo the non-existent"), plotting connections, etc. etc.), not 
>to
>mention the metaphysical freight they carry with them.

I'm not sure the reference to possible worlds that {mu'ei}
makes necessarily has to be in the object language. It
appears in the metalanguage explaining how it works, but
there is no need for the speakers of the language to
think of it in terms of worlds anymore than we do when we
use the subjunctive.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

>Subjunctives-- and whatever else possible worlds are meant to do -- can be
>done perfectly well without possible worlds, as witness the fact that they
>are handled in all natural languages without once resorting to possible
>worlds.
>(The nearest thing to a successful use of possible worlds in an object
>langauge is the sentence labeling within "proof" in modal Dialogic, where 
>the
>whole is merely a convenient device and exists only in proofs, never in
>sentences outside the proof context; sentences have only possibility and
>necessity operators. Happily there now are ways to get around even this use
>in almost every case.)
>
>Without possible worlds, what resources are left -- what do natural 
>languages
>use? For the most part (and without making an actual survey -- other
>patterns would be welcomed), four patterns seem to predominate: tense,
>condition, causation, and imagination (well, some mental activity).
>Naturally, I prefer tense, but it is so SAE that I did not want to throw it
>to the groups that thinks that anything SAE is ipso facto not Lojbanic.
>Lojban has at least considered the other three: {va'o}, {bai} and {da'i} 
>(and
>has put {mu'ei} in a tense-related selma'o}.
>
>Lojban is, of course, totally inspecific about the nature of time, but, if 
>we
>wanted to do a metalinguistic explication of tense structure, we would 
>almost
>certainly use one with linear past and branching futures. At least, the
>future would branch at kairoi,crucial events. The tense subjunctives tend 
>to
>go back to such a kairos and then leave it along another temporal path,
>defined by a different outcome at the crisis, and come the same distance
>forward on that path as back on the other. From the viewpoint of this
>alternate now, the different world can be viewed. (The forms used for this
>are usually obsolete ones, so subjunctives are good digging ground for the
>history of tense systems.) This system then gets expanded to the general
>case (as do all of these) of any contrary-to-fact or hypothetical 
>situation,
>even if it is not temporally connected to the present or a past kairos. 
>So,
>{puba} would not make a goodcandidate for subjunctives in general, though
>something related to it might have the advantage of cutting off a
>particularly useless kind of speculation, the "If Socrates were a 17th
>century Irish washerwoman" sort, where all connections with anything
>recognizable are severed, making defensible continuations impossible 
>(without
>a lot of assumptions not mentioned in the condition). Technically, a tense
>system subjunctive system needs two tenses: an establishing one for the
>kairos' other outcome, and one for the alternate now; the rest are normal
>tenses around these two. And, of course, the alternate now need not appear
>when it is clearly linked in with the kairos form nor in the subsequent
>sentences. But a comback form is needed to get out of the subjunctive
>situation (presumably the one for complex tense situations would do). 
>Tense
>are obviously most natural for contemplating what might have happened if,
>HIBK and the like. They work literally only if we allow going back even to
>the Big Bang (the ultimate kairos) and coming out along alternate settings 
>of
>the physical constants, say.
>
>The causal version has its natural home in general laws and their
>applications but is then expanded to cover cases where causality plays less
>to no role -- that can be used anyhow. "If I dropped this pencil it would
>accelerate pretty damned close to g" is natural for it; "If Socrates had
>escaped from prison, he would never have been famous" works with the loose
>notion of causality or law that holds in the social sciences; "If Scrates
>were a 17th century Irish washerwoman,..." is straining the idiom a bit,
>because no laws are apparently to be applicable (either Socrates or the
>woman's situation seem irrelevant). As with the tense case, we would need 
>a
>sign that brings us back from the hypothetical realm to the real -- or,
>perhaps more naturally, a device that indicates that the hypothesis is 
>still
>in play, since causal forms are typically one-sentence idioms (sumti of a
>causal predicate or BAI and a clause) or connectives that only connect two
>sentences, not easily more except in a cusal sequence: this and so this and
>so this. And, of course, the claim that this would happen if that had is a
>separate one from a strictly causal claim (in many cases); it may be true
>even if the causal claim is false. The choice of {bai} for this seems to 
>me
>particularly unwise, since, while it is a very general causal notion, it is
>also a very strong one, inappropriate from many subjunctive uses, where 
>only
>plausibility or, at best, probability are at play.
>
>The mental model has somewhat the opposite, supposing knows no limits from
>the real world -- we can suppose they did not apply. To be sure, except 
>when
>one is composing fantasy for entertainment, there is usually a practical,
>this-world, point and so we cannot dismiss all constraints. But the 
>at-home
>use of imaginational subjunctives is more open to the tests of plausibility
>and the like than to laws. And it lends itself more naturally to developing
>hypotheticals, adding new conditions on as the discussion moves along. It 
>is
>ideal for brainstorming, then, but can, of course, be adapted to other
>patterns. While I like the framing {da'i} - {da'inai} for contained uses
>like indirect proof, they are a useful pattern for subjunctives of the
>imaginary sort as well.
>
>Every subjunctive starts by setting up a condition, around which the rest 
>of
>the subjunctive discussion revolves. Thus, a device that introduces the
>condition is a natural beginning of any subjunctive. But that condition 
>does
>not have to be temporal or causal or even imaginary (though not holding at
>the moment), so a general "what happens if this condition obtains?" seems 
>the
>most complete basic subjunctive form, assuming there are ways to continue 
>it
>and get away from the hypothesis generally. This is why I favored {va'o} 
>for
>this purpose. I wasn't stuck on it, but it seemed to move in the right
>direction more literally than the other choices. On the other hand, I now
>appreciate the factual uses of {va'o} and would not like to lose them just 
>to
>get a subjunctive. So, I think that, if we want a general subjunctive,
>something like {va'o} is the way to go.
>
>On the other hand, I am not sure we want a general subjunctive. As I have
>mentioned in the above paragraphs, there seem to be a number of uses for 
>the
>subjunctive, similar in some ways, differing in others. And especially
>differing in what is going to constitute a true subjunctive claim, 
>something
>that a logical language ought to take quite seriously. That thought seems 
>to
>lead to sugtgestion that we open up a variety of subjunctives -- at least
>historical, causal and speculative -- and deal with them separately. It 
>may
>turn out that not all of them need subjunctives at all (causal ones do seem
>to be pretty easily converted to indicatives, some would say), but for 
>those
>that do, we can devise a starter (the condition), a continuer, and an 
>ender.
>
>

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