From jjllambias@hotmail.com Fri Jan 21 18:23:46 2000
X-Digest-Num: 341
Message-ID: <44114.341.1827.959273825@eGroups.com>
Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2000 18:23:46 PST
From: "Jorge Llambias" <jjllambias@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Subjunctive?


>How does one express the subjunctive mood in Lojban? Or does one
>not do so?

One way is to use the cmavo va'o, of selma'o BAI,
accompanied sometimes by the cmavo da'i of selma'o UI.

>I've seen 'puba' used for 'was/were going to'.
>If one says in English "I was going to go to the store." it implies
>that the event did not actually occur (usually). However, it
>is my understanding that in Lojban 'puba' would imply no such
>thing.

This isn't the subjunctive, but...

"puba" has been translated as "was/were going to", but
as you say it is not a good translation. I can't really
think of any examples where composite tenses like
puba, pupu, bapu, etc. would be useful.

What you want for your example is pupu'o:

mi pupu'o klama le zarci
I was about to go to the store.

There is no implication here that the going
eventually took place.

All tense+aspect combinations are very useful:

caca'o citka = is now eating
puca'o citka = was eating
baca'o citka = will be eating

capu'o citka = is about to eat, is going to eat
pupu'o citka = was about to eat, was going to eat
bapu'o citka = will be about to eat, "will be going to eat"

caba'o citka = has now eaten
puba'o citka = had eaten
baba'o citka = will have eaten

Before these aspectuals (ca'o, ba'o, pu'o) were introduced
to the language, these compound English tenses were translated
by chained Lojban tenses, but doing that now that we have
the aspectuals is not really a very good idea.

>Would the following capture the english meaning?:
>
>co'anai ku mi puba klama le zarci

I don't think co'anai is grammatical, although I think
it should be grammatical, but then I don't think it
should mean what you want here... :)

Back to the subjunctive:

>Another example, how would I say "If I had a million dollars, I'd
>be rich." in Lojban?
>
>I can say:
>
>ganai mi ponse le megdo be le rupnu gi mi ricfu
>
>which I would translate as:
>
>If I have a million dollars then I am rich.
>
>Which is subtlely different.

It is actually radically different, and it doesn't
really say what you want. I do not have a million dollars,
and therefore this two sentences are both true and
utterly uninformative:

ganai mi ponse lo megdo be lo'e rupnu gi mi ricfu
"If I have a million dollars then I am rich."

ganai mi ponse lo megdo be lo'e rupnu gi mi pindi
"If I have a million dollars then I am poor."

Both true. Both uninformative.

>Do others think this is a useful distinction, or do I just
>have english on the brain?

What we want to say is something more like:

va'oda'i le nu mi ponse lo megdo be lo'e rupnu kei mi ricfu
"Under the hypothetical conditions that I have (would have)
a million dollars, I am (would be) rich."

That's how I see it anyway.

co'o mi'e xorxes

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