Subject: Re: [lojban] Tentative summary on Attitudinals

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 21:37:14 EDT

In a message dated 7/1/2001 4:37:54 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> You can hypothesize a "possible world" as the whole sentence, or in a 
> subclause
> - the {da'i} should be able to apply to {poi} instead of the whole {.i},
> changing the meaning of the sentence.
> 
> However, attitudinals in different locations don't change the meaning of the
> sentence from what it would be if the attitudinal was at the beginning of 
> the
> sentence, in the state of attitudinals right now.
> 
> Result: anything that creates possible worlds, so that counterfactual
> statements can be discussed logically, cannot be a UI.
> 

Let me see if I get you. In "the man who would be king came in" the 
"counterfactual" or however you describe it is in the restrictive relative 
clause, but if we put {da'i} or some such there, it would leak out and make 
the whole hypothetical "the man who is king would come in," or so? I think 
that is right under the present rules, though relative clauses could be 
fairly easily accomodated out. The general problem might remain -- and once 
we start accomodating things out we could get carried away to the full set of 
suggestions. So, I am not sure whether this shows that some, at least, of 
the non-assertive uses can't be UI or whether it shows that we have to set up 
some distribution rules of the sort suggested. Or maybe look for a different 
approach altogether.