Subject: Re: [lojban] conditionals in Lojban

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2001 11:45:30 EDT

In a message dated 4/22/2001 7:25:08 AM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> 1) "I was (or had been etc.) obliged/forced etc. to do something" (and hence 
> did it)
> 2) "I should/ought have done something (in the past)" (which I actually 
> didn't do and now am regretting missing it).
> 
> Something like {.ei.oi mi pu ...} seems to be ambiguous: am I regretful for 
> having been obliged/forced to do something I didn't want 
> to (but actually did) or for not doing it (and now thinking that "I should 
> have done it")?
> 
> The problem seemingly arises from the fact that {.ei} (like other cmavo of 
> that kind) refers to the *speaker* at the time of his 
> utterance and not to the time the uttered took place.
> Because referring to the speaker, a second problem seems to derive from: 
> How can it be expressed if the "I" is replaced by "you" or 
> any sumti not referring to the speaker?
> 
> 1) "They had to do ... (and therefore did)
> 2) "You should have done ...", "They shouldn't have done ..." (but 
> didn't/but did)
> 
> I checked the Book for it, but - drowned in details on attitudinals etc. - 
> couldn't get an answer. Also, as far I remember the threads 
> 

At least a part of a short answer to your problem seems to be a confusion 
(which the Book does not always alleviate though it is a problem known from 
day 2 of Loglan) between expressing and asserting. The UI attitudinals are 
there to express the emotions, etc., the speaker is undergoing at the moment. 
They do not assert that he is undergoing them. If he uses a UI for an 
attitude he does not have, he is not lying (though he may, of course, be 
misleading or insincere or... -- but that may even be acceptable). On the 
other hand, there is a set of attitudinal brivla (which oddly do not match 
the UI very well) which can be used to assert that some one (speaker or not) 
is or did or will have a certain attitude. For as long as I have been 
involved with Loglan/Lojban, people have regularly used UI for assertions and 
frequently assertions for UI, to the great detriment of clear thinking and 
clear writing. The fact is that English uses the same words -- even the same 
first-person expressions -- for both, and most other languages do something 
at least similar. Figure out what you mean and then say that in Lojban; most 
problems disappear then (though there are some hard cases. I take your cases 
to be
1. mi pu bilga lenu zukte .i mi djica lenu mi u zukte.
2. .u'u (maybe .uinai) mi na pu zukte 
1' ko'a pu bilga le nu zukte
2' do [] 

The [] is a real problem: what goes in here depends upon the nature of the 
"should" - contractual or moral obligation or practical considerations. Only 
the first of these is covered by {bilga} in an obvious way.