<djuno> & <xusra> (was Knowledge & Belief)

[Steven Belknap <sbelknap@UIC.EDU>]

>coi doi markl.
>
>If I'm attending a baseball game, & I observe the pitcher
>throwing the ball, & the batter failing to connect, & the
>catcher catching the ball....
>
>Am I really unjustified in saying {le kavbu cu djuno lo
>du'u le renro ba'o renro le bolci}?

Well, having attended many Cubs games, its fairly clear to me that baseball
is a religion for some people. So, using the ethos of baseball as an
epistemology, one would certainly be justified in using <djuno> here. The
perfective <ba'o> would refer to an action which has already taken place,
but does using <ba'o> mean that the pitcher has completed this particular
pitch, or that he is done pitching? I find that I really don't understand
what <ba'o> means in this context.

I gloss it as:

<le kavbu cu djuno lo du'u le renro ba'o renro le bolci>

"The catcher has knowledge (of method unspecified) that the pitcher is
finished pitching the ball."

As a first step at sorting out what we are trying to say here, wouldn't it
really be better to use the completitive, <mo'u>? This tense refers to a
pitch which is at the natural ending point of a pitch, that is, with the
ball in the catchers glove:

<le kavbu ku cu djuno lo du'u le renro ku mo'u renro le bolci>

"The catcher knows that the pitcher has thrown the ball (to the catcher,
who caught it)"

If you are not meaning to emphasize "baseball as philosophy of life" or to
emphasize by which school of thought, technical means, or craft guild the
catcher is perceiving the pitch (MPEG video, perhaps?), I don't see any
reason why one would use <djuno> here. In this example, why would one want
to use a bridi which wants a <du'u> type sumti? Even if you did, wouldn't
<sidbo> be preferable to <djuno>? Maybe <djuno> *would* would be
appropriate if one wanted to say:

<le kavbu ku cu djuno le du'u le renro ku cu sutra renro kei>

The catcher knows that the pitcher throws fast.

because this begs the question, "how does the catcher know that the pitcher
throws fast?" And that is where the epistemology place comes in: perhaps
the catcher's glove hand burns at the end of each inning, or the
speedometer on the sideline shows that the pitcher is throwing the ball
fast, or whatever. But that is not what we are trying to say here. We are
trying to describe the catcher's impression about a single event; there
shouldn't be much reason to go into why the catcher thinks the pitcher has
thrown the ball.

 Wouldn't it really be preferable to use <sidbo> & <nu>, that is, to say:

<fi le kavbu ku cu sidbo fa nu le renro mo'u renro le bolci kei>

"The catcher thinks that the pitcher threw the ball."

or equivalently in meaning,

<le kavbu ku cu tesidbo zo'e nu le renro mo'u renro le bolci kei>

This would be a sentence that might occur in a novel with an omniscent
narrator, perhaps. If a newspaper reporter was reporting the catchers
perception about this pitching event, the reporter might ask the catcher
what he thought about the event, then summarize what the catcher said by:

<le kavbu ku cu cusku nu le renro mo'u renro le bolci kei>

"The catcher says that the pitcher threw the ball."

Or if the reporter really did want to emphasize that an assertion was being
made, (a rather odd thing to do about a single event, but whatever), then
he might use <xusru> and <du'u>:

<le kavbu ku cu xusru du'u le renro mo'u renro le bolci kei>

"The catcher asserts that the pitcher threw the ball."

What I'm getting at is one can avoid philosphical conundrums in lojban if
one strives to say what one knows, and no more. This is the "Joe Friday"
approach to constructing a lojban utterance: "Just the facts, m'am."

co'o mi'e la stivn

Steven Belknap, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Medicine
University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria