.imu'ibo

[Logical Language Group <cbmvax!uunet!GREBYN.COM!cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu!lojbab>]

(best to put the .i on the front since mu'ibo cannot stand alone)

There has long been inconsistency in Loglan and Lojban between how the
tense operators and the causal operators are analyzed.  The BAI operators
are generalized from the causals which were a distinct category in JCB's
version of the language from his modal auxiliaries that also undely BAI.
In short, we havconverged several unrelated constructs into a single
grammar, but the underlying semantics remains inconsistent.

In general we have erased the smeantic distinction between causals and other
BAIs.  I believe that, even if we made the change suggested here to
bring .ibabo and .imu'ibo into line with each other, there would be
other inconsistencies that cannot be resolved so easily.  There are other
problems with tenses that are hideously complex, with very little basis in
natural language to tell us which way to go, so we have chosen to go for
the forms that lead to normal English glossing where arbitrary decisions
are demanded.  This could be considered malglico, but when you have no other
basis for deciding, malglico beats unnatural.

Making the suggested change is a decided change from JCB's very clear
writing on this subject, and our philosophy has been that we need to have a
good reason to change from a JCB design feature, usually something being
internally broken.

The inconsistencies that led to this question being raised can be solved by
teaching method (people learning now of course are stuck with having no
such organized explanation, and hence will sometimes run into these conflicts).
THere would probably be significant relearning impact for Nora nad me and
others who have learned the language thus far.

Given the late stage of development, I am thus in need of great convincing
that a chnage is justified before voting for it.

lojbab