Re: What would this mood be called?

At 04:34 PM 3/4/02 +0000, Joe Hill wrote:
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Bob Greenwade" <bob.greenwade@...>
>To: <CONLANG@...>
>Sent: Monday, March 04, 2002 3:31 PM
>Subject: What would this mood be called?
>
>
> >     I'm thinking to add to Rav Zarruvo a verb mood whose general sense is,
> > "Well, I thought so but now I'm not so sure."  It's the sort of thing that
> > could be used after discovering that the man you were about to accuse as a
> > sniper has Parkinson's disease, or that your stomach wasn't ready for
>solid
> > food after all.  I have no idea what to call this, though.
> >
>
>Retractive?  I just made that up...but it sounds about right...
    Of the suggestions given, this is the one I went for.
    It also made me ponder if "mitigative" could be the right word, so I
checked some definitions and, while it didn't work, I decided to add that
one as well for a sense of "sort of."
    Also, while adding retractive mood to the text of my Rav Zarruvo
grammar, I discovered that it could be used not only for stating a
transition from definite to doubtful, but also (when combined with other
mood auxiliaries) for any recent transition of mood.  For a language that
likes to be concise without inflection, this little word has become a gold
mine!  :-]


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