WikiDiscuss

On Wed, Nov 24, 2004 at 10:28:50AM -0500, Pierre Abbat wrote:
> On Monday 22 November 2004 21:08, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> > {mi klama mu'i nai lo nu mi nelci} is "I go, although I don't
> > want to", or "I go, it is not the case that I want to", or "I
> > don't go, though I want to"?
>
> "I go, but not because I want to."

Agreed.

> "I go, although I don't want to" is "mi klama mu'inai lo nu mi na
> nelci".

No, that Lojban is "I go, but not because I don't want to", which is
kind of non-sensical. "I go, although I don't want to" is
"despite", and is much, much harder than that.

> "I go, it is not the case that I want to" is "mi klama .i mi na
> nelci", if I understand you right.

That's kind of trivial, but yeah.

> "I don't go, though I want to" is "mi na'e klama mu'inai lo nu mi
> nelci" or "mi klama mu'inai lo nu mi nelci kei naku".

Nope, that's "despite" again. Yours says "I other-than go, but not
because I want to" (was there something wrong with "na"??) and "I
go, but not because I want to" (na ku at the end dose nothing,
IIRC).

I'm piggybacking on this for a mini-essay on the topic I wrote this
morning. It turns out that "despite" is a rather complicated
concept.

I'm working from point-form notes here, so my apologies if it
stinks.

We basically have five cases to cover: cause, prevent, does not
cause, despite with occurence, and despite without occurence. That
last is what is normally meant by "despite". The second-last is
what people have been treating "despite" to mean.

lo nu ja'a/na X cu rinka lo nu na Y == X/not-X causes not-Y ==
X/not-X prevents Y

lo nu ja'a/na X cu rinka lo nu ja'a Y == X/not-X causes Y

lo nu X cu na rinka lo nu Y == X does not cause Y

lo nu X cu na rinka lo nu na Y == X does not prevent Y == Y may or
may not occur, but it's despite X == despite without occurence

Y .i je lo nu X cu na rinka lo nu Y == Y occurs, and X does not
prevent it == despite with occurence (because "lo nu" clauses are
irrealis).

Now, some of these are fairly easy to translate into BAI style.
"cause" is just {ri'a}. "does not cause" is just {ri'a nai}.

"prevent" is harder, assuming you want to use {ri'a} and not {se
ri'a} because you have to negate the main bridi, so the BAI alone
can't do it.

na Y ri'a lo nu ja'a/na X == X prevents Y

I see no way to do despite-without-occurence with BAI tags.

So far as I can tell, despite cannot be done using BAI tags alone,
at all. The best I have for "despite with occurence" (who cares
about without??) is

X do'e lo nu Y na rinka lo nu na no'a

This could also be done with va'o.

I find it a bit unsatisfying, so here's another option:

Suppose we allow:

lo nu X to'e rinka lo nu Y == X prevents Y == lo nu X cu rinka lo nu
na Y

This means that Y to'e ri'a X == na Y ri'a X, which is definately a
bit wierd because you have a BAI clause invalidating the main bridi,
but I can't imagine another use for "to'e rinka", so maybe it's not
so bad.

Then we can do:

lo nu X na to'e rinka lo nu Y == Y to'e ri'a nai X == Y occurs, and
it is not the case that X prevents it == Y despite X

-Robin