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On Tue, 31 Dec 2002, Jorge Llambias wrote:
>
> la lojbab cusku di'e
>
> > > >mi nitcu fi lenu setca lei vi cukta ce'u poi tanxe (vo'e? depending on
> >what
> > > >it means these days, or maybe ri to avoid the question)
> > > >
> > > >which might back-translate as
> > > >I need that these books be inserted into something which will box them.
> > > >in case I've mangled things unrecognizably.
> > >
> > >And what goes in x2 of nitcu? What do you answer to {go'i ma}?
> >
> >da .a'o, or maybe da da'i(cu'i?)
> >
> >There may in fact be nothing which exists that goes there, but that does
> >not remove your need for it. Why force people to claim a particular value,
> >when I do not know what that value is, or whether it exists.
>
> We don't want to force people to claim a particular value exists,
> of course. That's why da is wrong and that's why I use lo'e
> there.
Does it make sense to want or need things that don't exist? It could be
said that the sentence takes the speaker to an imaginary world where the
item exists; it's hypothetical anyway, so why be fussy about truth values?
The nonexistent item exists to the extent that it's being discussed as a
real item, and desired based on those properties.
--
// if (!terrorist)
// ignore ();
// else
collect_data ();