Subject: Re: [lojban] Lessons

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 16:14:13

la rab spir cusku di'e

>Okay, then we're essentially in agreement. ganai...gi and go...gi are
>legitimate ways of saying if...then as long as you're not basing it on a
>situation that is likely to be untrue. That part is what requires the
>'subjunctive'.

That's not what I'm saying. The counterfactuals are just one example
where a simple ganai...gi won't work. I don't think they are the only
case. And I don't think it really has to do with likelihood, for
example "if you hadn't won the lottery, you wouldn't be rich"
is based on a situation that was very likely to be true (i.e. not
winning the lotery).

>So... do we need a new tense for this? Perhaps use a couple of 'x' cmavo to
>express "in another universe" or "in all possible universes" and one to 
>return
>to the universe of what we believe to be true?

Something like that, yes, except I think it has to be a UI, not
a tense, and I'm not sure we need a new cmavo, we may already
have what we need. For example, I think we can understand {ei}
to mean "in an ideal world" (essentially the job of "should" in
English) {a'o} to mean "in my favourite possible world" and {au}
"in my favourite impossible world", or something like that, I
still haven't worked out all the details, but it looks promising.
I'd rather be sure of what we already have before bringing in
new cmavo.

co'o mi'e xorxes

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