Subject: Re: [lojban] Subjunctives and worlds

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2002 09:33:45 EST

In a message dated 2/16/2002 8:12:54 PM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> To say that English's 'subjunctives' -- which we're using as a term
> for a semantically rather than grammatically-defined construction --
> use only temporal notions is to take a hardline monosemy position
> -- i.e. to deny polysemy of could/would. Furthermore, an important
> ingredient in subjunctives if "if", and it is hard to see "if" as
> a temporal notion.
> 
Well, I see "could/would" precisely as using tense terms, but I'll agree that 
other things might be involved in a minor way. As for "if", I don't see it 
as subjunctive, but as setting up conditions, which may then being either 
subjunctive or not.

<Jorge is right. The "possible worlds" gloss of mu'ei and ba'oi is
simply an attempt to model in a formal and explicit way their meaning.
I would do exactly the same for English conditional _could/would_.
If you have a preferred way of modelling English conditional _could/would_,
I expect it could be applied to mu'ei and ba'oi.>

I am sure that your intentions are as you say, however I see the discussion 
around these intentions clearly going into the object language metaphysics, 
which is my concern. I don't object to {mu'ei} as a word, since I do think 
we need a new one (well, three actually).

<we would 
> >almost
> >certainly use one with linear past and branching futures. 

ba'oi does that.>

I haven't come across {ba'oi} that I can find. How does it work?