Re: "I didn't know that..."

On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 15:13:28 -0500, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:

>Given statement X which is a true statement that continues to be true
>in the present time, what tense/mood/verb form would your lang use in
>X in the equivalent of "I didn't know X"?
>
>AFAICT, Englishhas somewhat free variation between the past and
>present indicative here, although the present is only an option when
>the statement continues to be true.
I don't see this. The reason the past is used here is because it is,
in fact, the simple past. This statement is in reply to someone telling
you the fact, therefore you NOW KNOW the fact and the present thus
cannot be used.

>Spanish (and, I suppose, other
>romlangs) uses the present subjunctive, which seems odd since it's not
>a counterfactual statement.  I'm interested in other natlang examples
>as well as conlang ones, since I'm trying to decide how to handle this
>case...
And as above...this is indeed a counterfactual statement because
you NOW KNOW the fact. Thus the usage of the subjunctive here
makes sense.

Though my language has a verb form shared between subjunctive and
conditional, it could not be used in this situation and it would
have to be dealt with as in English (using the simple past):

Ghonun ose. =I didn't know that.

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