From lojbab@lojban.org Sat May 06 01:05:08 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 1418 invoked from network); 6 May 2000 08:05:08 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m2.onelist.org with QMQP; 6 May 2000 08:05:08 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO stmpy.cais.net) (205.252.14.63) by mta1 with SMTP; 6 May 2000 08:05:07 -0000 Received: from bob (50.dynamic.cais.com [207.226.56.50]) by stmpy.cais.net (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id EAA10176 for ; Sat, 6 May 2000 04:03:35 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <4.2.2.20000506035252.00ab2100@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: vir1036/pop.cais.com@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.2.2 Date: Sat, 06 May 2000 04:07:40 -0400 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Intro and questions In-Reply-To: References: <62.31e11b7.264458e0@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" At 11:17 PM 05/05/2000 -0500, Taral wrote: >On Fri, 5 May 2000 pycyn@aol.com wrote: > > > << .i la'e zoi gy. counterfactuals .gy mo > > (What are counterfactuals?)>> > > Sentences that contain references to situations known or believed not to > > obtain, typically, in English, "if , then" with subjunctives: "If I were > > inventing English, I would leave the damned things out" They have various > > functions that get glopped together in English. > >.i mi na jimpe (I don't understand.) The example was probably more confusing than it needed to be, in the interest of humor. Take the classic saying "If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride". Now we know that wishes are NOT horses, so the "if" clause of this conditional is always false. As a conditional then, it is rather meaningless. Why would we make a condition where the antecedent cannot be true? In this case, to stretch a metaphor about beggars. Another example: "If I were President (of the US), then I'd ...". Well I am not President, so the antecedent is again false. But in this case it is a theoretically possible situation, and if I were running for President (there's another), then you might take the conditional as expressing a campaign promise. Alternatively, if I were a media columnist saying that, I might be making a serious criticism of some policy decision. In all these cases, the antecedent is counter to fact, hence "counterfactual". We mark counterfactuals with one of the rare surviving places that English uses a subjunctive ("If I were President", vs. "When I *was* President"). Because there are so many diverse uses for the counterfactual in English, there is no simple translation into Lojban. Most common is to use discursive (UI) "da'i" which being the opposite of "da'inai" ("in fact") marks a supposition which is indeed NOT fact. But that may not be best for all scenarios. Read back discussions on Lojban List looking for the word "counterfactual" to find the issues. lojbab ---- lojbab lojbab@lojban.org Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org (newly updated!)