[i.e., that if there were a light source and if I were there, seeing by it], then it would reflect off 
and I would see it… even though I am now inside the monastery and, since my entrance, the world may have fallen into total and unexpected night. In other worlds, the use of as “there is…” is not quite the same as in English. You use for “I see…” only when what there is is within sight. Otherwise, though you actually say the same word, i.e., , you are using the assumptive voice. In old Glotolog texts, the assumptive voice was actually indicated by what is called, in that final appendix to most standard Glotolog grammars on outmoded traditions, a metaphoric dot, which was placed over the 
and the . When speaking in the assumptive voice, and were said to be in the metaphoric mood. No dot, however, in a sentence like “ ” would be placed over . The logic here is that, in the assumptive voice, one of the things assumed is that the rain, at any rate, is real.
It is interesting: Many native Glotolog speakers, when given transcripts of ancient manuscripts on which the dots have been left out (due to the customs of modern Glotolog printing), can still often place the date of composition from the manner in which sentences like “ ” are used, whether in the indicative (“There are…”), the literal (“I see…”), or the assumptive (“Somewhere out of sight it is…”) voice. Apparently once the metaphoric dot fell out as archaic usage, the indicative and the assumptive were used much more informally.
Because of the tendency to use English analytic terms in Glotolog, many Glotolog terms are practically identical to their English equivalents (though, as we have seen, the grammar and the logical form of the language are quite different from those of English), so that a native speaker of one has little difficulty getting the sense of many Glotolog pronouncements, especially those having to do with logic and sensation.
Here is a list of words that are the same in both languages (that is, they are employed in the same situations):
if
can be called
at night
true
I feel
false
this/that
though
on my body
real
Also, logical questions are posed in Glotolog by putting the word “is” before, and a question mark after, the clause to be made interrogative. The fact that the semantics and logical form of the language are different from ours only presents problems in particular cases.
(To summarize those differences: Glotolog has no true predicates [“I feel,” as well as “can be called true,” for example, are the same part of speech as “”]; in fact, Glotolog has no true subjects either. It has only objects, the observer of which is expressed as a description of the object, as is the medium by which the object is perceived; sometimes these descriptions are taken as real; at other times they are taken as virtual. And it should be fairly evident even from this inadequate description of the language — even without exposure to their complex religion, science, poetry, and politics — that this template still gives them a method for modeling the world as powerful as our own equally interesting [and equally arbitrary] subject/predicate template.)
One of the most famous of such problems is the question put by one of the greatest Glotolog philosophers:
“If, at night, can be called true, though I feel on my body, is this real?”
The sense of this, along with the answer, seems self-evident to any English speaker; at the same time, to most of us, it is a mystery why this should be a great philosophical question. The answer lies in the logical form of the language as it has been outlined; but for those of you who do not wish to untangle it further, some of its philosophical significance for the Glotologs can be suggested by mentioning that it has caused among those perspicacious people practically as much philosophical speculation as the equally famous question by the equally famous Bishop Berkeley, about the sound of the unattended tree falling in the deserted forest, and for many of the same reasons — though the good Bishop’s query, perfectly comprehensible as to sense by the native Glotolog speaker thanks to the shared terms, seems patently trivial and obvious to them!
A final note to this problem: In recent years, three very controversial solutions have been offered to this classical problem in Glotolog philosophy, all from one young philosophy student resident in one of the southern monasteries (it rains much less in the south, which has caused some of the northern sages to suggest this upstart cannot truly comprehend the nature of this essentially northern metaphysical dilemma), all three of which involve the reintroduction of the metaphoric dot, placed not in its traditional position over the or the , or even over the , but rather over the words “real,” “true,” or the question mark — depending on the solution considered.
More conservative philosophers have simply gone “Humph!” (another utterance common in both Glotolog and English) at these suggestions, claiming that it is simply un-Glotologian to use the metaphoric dot over imported words. The dot is, and it says so in the grammars, reserved for native Glotolog terms. As one of the wittier, older scholars has put it (I translate freely): “In Glotolog, English terms have never had to bear up under this mark; they may, simply, collapse beneath its considerable weight.” The more radical youth of the country, however, have been discussing, with considerable interest, this brilliant young woman’s proposals.
35. Science fiction interests me as it models, by contextual extension, the ontology suggested among these notes. As it gets away from that ontology, I often find it appalling in the callousness and grossness of what it has to say of the world. (Like Wittgenstein, when I write these notes on science fiction I am “making propaganda for one kind of thinking over another.”) Does that differ any from saying that I like science fiction that suggests to me the world is the way I already think it is? Alas, not much — which is probably why even some of the most appalling, callous, and gross science fiction is, occasionally, as interesting as it is.
One difference between a philosopher and a fiction writer is that a fiction writer may purposely use a verbal ambiguity to make two (or more) statements using the same words; she may even intend all these statements to be taken as metaphoric models of each other. But she is still unlikely, except by accident, to call them the same statement. A philosopher, on the other hand, may accidentally use a verbal ambiguity, but once he uses it, he is committed to maintaining that all its meanings are one. And, usually, it takes a creative artist to bring home to us, when the philosophy has exhausted us, that everything in the universe is somewhat like everything else, no matter how different any two appear; likewise, everything is somewhat different from everything else, no matter how similar any two appear. And these two glorious analytical redundancies form the ordinate and abscissa of the whole determinately indeterminant schema.