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xod: > On Sat, 31 May 2003, Jordan DeLong wrote: > > > On Sat, May 31, 2003 at 04:43:05PM +0100, And Rosta wrote: > > > xod: > > [...] > > > > In Lojban, events can "exist" without them ever having to have > > > > occurred (yet) > > > > > > As discussed 6 months ago, I think this is an odious & egregious > > > inconsistency in Lojban. However, if I pretend you were talking > > > about du'u rather than nu, then we can let this issue go unrediscussed > > > for the time being > > > > I don't remember the discussion 6 months ago. But I agree with > > And. The events-always-exist thing is a dumb hack, because we don't > > have sufficient gadri to properly support certain types of predicates > > (djica, nitcu) > > Well, I'm only quoting chapter and verse concerning the existence of > events. Can you remember where? I would still consider it a misfeature, but it would put a different complexion on any BF decisions on the matter. > But I don't see how it could be any other way, if you want to be > able to speak about hypothetical and future events. And we do have da'i to > make the differentiation, which is usually understood anyway > > If we aren't allowed to discuss imaginary events, how can we write any > fiction stories? Even a scientific paper would be impossible. So would > computer source code -- here you are discussing operations on data > structures that don't yet exist in memory at the time when the source is > being written Ways of talking about imaginary events: * If the entire text content is imaginary, as with a fiction story, then ignore the imaginariness. The falsity of the story relative to This World is irrelevant, because the entire story describes an imaginary world. * ka'e may work, depending on how definitive the "innately capable" gloss is deemed to be. Otherwise, mu'ei. * du'u * the not-yet-existent Kind gadri * da'i can work in some cases, whether or not the way usage has defined it is correct. Different choices among these are appropriate for different cases. Besides, even if we really lacked any way of talking about imaginary things, a way of talking about imaginary events would not solve the problem of lacking a way to talk about imaginary dogs and imaginary cabbages. --And.