Subject: Re: [lojban] memories

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 17:08:39 EDT

In a message dated 8/19/2002 9:28:37 AM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

<<
> Let's consider these three English sentences:
> 
> E1) John remembered that he had watered the plants.
> E2) John remembered watering the plants.
> E3) John remembered to water the plants.
> 
> The first one goes into Lojban most directly:
> 
> L1) la djan pu morji le du'u dy pu jaursabji lei spati
> 
> {morji} means "x1 remembers fact x2 about x3" so it cannot
> be used to translate E2 or E3 directly, we need to paraphrase.
> (For some reason, Lojban tends to go for the least basic
> meaning in these cases, this reminds me of {facki}. You can't
> translate "I remember you" as {mi do morji}.)
> 
>>

Good analysis (so far ans in what follows). But the gismu to be reminded of 
is {djuno}, which translates "know" in essentially the same peculiar sense 
and leaves aside or off in some corner many more common senses. As you note, 
{mi morji do} fails just like {mi djuno do}. But is {morji} veridical?

<<
We can only morji fe facts, we can't morji fe events, but
we can morji fi events, so we could translate E2 as:

L2) la djan pu morji fi le nu dy pu jaursabji lei spati
John remembered (something) about his watering of the plants.

Clearly not the same as remembering watering the plants, since what he 
remembers might well be that he did not do it though he was supposed to. 
Is E2 really different from E1? In my usage, at least, remembering watering 
(etc.) is more imagistic, detailed, whatever -- it is remembering the 
experience not merely the fact, remembering myself in the act of doing it, 
perhaps. 

<<
Now what about "remember to"? It seems to me that to remember
to do something is to remember that one has to do it and also to
do it. I could say "I remembered I had to water the plants, but
there was no water, so I couldn't do it", but this one sounds
at least to me a bit strained: "I remembered to water the plants,
but there was no water so I couldn't do it". Perhaps "had to"
is a bit strong also, it could just be "was going to": "I
remembered to" = "I remembered that I was going to and I did".

Yes, this is a compelling case, though I think I could find instances where 
official Lojban usage has overcome even more compelling ones. I don't find 
the "remembered to but couldn't" case as objectionable as you do, but 
"rememberd to but just didn't" seems clearly wrong. 
The obligation involved is pretty marginal -- I sometoimes remember to do -- 
and do -- things that someone else was planning to do, as a courtesy, not an 
obligation. The obligation need not be personal, then -- just something that 
is to be done (and even that may be no more than an "it would be nice if" 
situation. Can we say something like {ei ru'e}, to express the situation? 
And how would we report it?

<<
If we forget about the fullfillment, we can use {pu'o} to
translate E3:

L3) la djan pu morji le du'u dy pupu'o jaursabji lei spati
John remembered that he had been going to water the plants.

But in that case, did he water them? Not necessarily for L3,
but almost certainly for E3, so not a good tranlation.
Nice -- but I wouldn't have thought {pu'o} was in the running, since it 
applies, in a weak way, before everything one does, so provides no special 
sense of obligation (though to remember it does requires some awareness -- 
even if only after the fact).

It seems that "remember to" is not only about memory but
also about fullfillment of an obligation or an intention.
Or can we take the fullfillment part as a Gricean implication,
if he remembered he was going to do it, then he must have
done it?
Well, if he remembered to do it, he did it AND he remembered, in the ordinary 
sense, that it was to be done (though how that is expressed is another 
matter). I would take {morji le nu}, which is not now in use but is 
grammatical, as a way of saying all this (an idiom, to be sure, but a 
familiar one in western langauges -- what is the situation in Arabic and 
Chinese?) What can be said then of {djuno le nu}, "knows to do"?

<<
The same of course applies to "forget that" vs "forget to".

Not quite obviously, mainly because "forget" and -- on the above analysis 
--"remember" are complex. To forget to do something requires not doing it 
but does it also require (or allow, even) not remembering. Is "forget" is 
just "not remember", {na morji} or is it the opposite state (or whatever -- 
sometimes a process, clearly) of remembering? These will have different 
effects on what we say about forgetting to do something. Not remembering to 
do as {na morji} ought to mean either not remembering that it was to be done 
or not doing it. But I think that we don't want to call remembering but not 
doing (simpliciter -- being unable is another case) a case of forgetting to 
do. So, the {to'e morji} is probably right (if {morji} is), and then the 
outcome is "did not remember it was to be done and so did not do}, although I 
am not sure that that is directly derivative (I suppose it requires that if 
he remembered to do it, then he did it because he remembered it was to be 
done, which sounds plausible).
If {morji le nu} can't be used, what can we use instead?