From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Mon Apr 21 16:23:24 2008 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:23:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Jo5M4-0004nU-Cp for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:23:24 -0700 Received: from anno.name ([81.169.186.62] helo=mail.anno.name) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Jo5Lv-0004my-IQ for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:23:24 -0700 Received: from [192.168.178.24] (p5085CD06.dip.t-dialin.net [80.133.205.6]) by mail.anno.name (Postfix) with ESMTP id AEDCA26148 for ; Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:23:04 +0200 (CEST) Message-ID: <480D21DF.9080605@perpetuum-immobile.de> Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:23:11 +0200 From: Timo Paulssen User-Agent: Mozilla-Thunderbird 2.0.0.9 (X11/20080110) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: mo ma References: <2f91285f0804211433t2d33ebb5wd20fac042657e71c@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <2f91285f0804211433t2d33ebb5wd20fac042657e71c@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: 0.1 X-Spam-Score-Int: 1 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 518 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: timonator@perpetuum-immobile.de Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners Vid Sintef wrote: > I wonder what the valid form of answer to this question would be, > {do pu se darxi lo mo prenu ma}. > Can it be answered by something like {tolcitno lo grana}, > or should it, in this case, be {lo tolcitno prenu lo grana}? > > > mu'o mi'e tijlan The way I understood lojbanic questions until now is like this (doesn't hold true for indirect questions with kau, though): The question word is kind of a placeholder for the grammatical thing you want to have as your answer. However, the way to answer isn't defined by the grammar of lojban, it's more like a protocol. To me saying ma is like "I want to know what sumti goes here", but it's not like "the lojban grammar now forces you to say a sumti and in all of our heads it will magically appear inside the spot where ma was before". So what I would answer to your question is this: Say what's most sensible. In this case I personally would answer with {go'i lo tolcitno prenu lo grana}. mu'o mi'e timos