From cbmvax!uunet!CUVMB.BITNET!LOJBAN Tue Jun 16 16:30:59 1992 Return-Path: Received: by snark.thyrsus.com (/\==/\ Smail3.1.21.1 #21.19) id ; Tue, 16 Jun 92 16:30 EDT Received: by cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (5.57/UUCP-Project/Commodore 2/8/91) id AA17977; Tue, 16 Jun 92 16:10:48 EDT Received: from pucc.Princeton.EDU by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA12230; Tue, 16 Jun 92 15:43:13 -0400 Message-Id: <9206161943.AA12230@relay1.UU.NET> Received: from PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU by pucc.Princeton.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 2922; Tue, 16 Jun 92 15:41:20 EDT Received: by PUCC (Mailer R2.08 ptf027) id 5090; Tue, 16 Jun 92 15:40:40 EDT Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1992 13:57:04 EDT Reply-To: John Cowan Sender: Lojban list From: John Cowan Subject: Chinese-type Questions in Lojban X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann Status: RO X-Status: This is a fragment of a future paper explaining how to ask questions in Lojban. There are two basic kinds of questions in Lojban: fill-in-the-blank questions and truth questions. A fill-in-the-blank question uses one of various question words; the word is placed where the answer is meant to go. For example: la lojban mo. Lojban is-what? asks for a selbri to replace the cmavo "mo", and ti mapku ma this is-a-hat-of what? asks for a sumti to replace the cmavo "ma". There are also question cmavo for tenses/modals ("cu'e"), place tags ("fi'a"), and attitudinals ("pei"). In addition, each of the five kinds of logical connectives has a question word. Until now, I had always assumed that the logical-connective questions had no equivalents in natural languages -- which is always a dangerous assumption: for each grammatical feature, some language somewhere does it Lojbanically! It turns out that a common kind of question in Chinese exactly matches the logical-connective question, except that Chinese has no explicit cmavo. The question ni3 qu4 bu qu4 you go not go means "Are you going?/Will you go?" It is a neutral question, with none of the impatience of English "Are you going or not?" Well, in Lojban we can say: do klama gi'i na klama you go [connective ?] not go which literally asks "Which logical connective, inserted between the propositions 'You go' and 'You don't go', makes the resultant proposition true?" Acceptable answers are: nagi'e Not 1st but 2nd. I go. gi'enai 1st but not second. I don't go. gi'onai 1st or 2nd but not both Maybe yes, maybe no. In each case, the answerer supplies the appropriate logical connection cmavo. In Chinese, these questions are limited to verbs; in Lojban, both selbri and sumti (and other constructions as well) can make use of the construction: do djica loi tcati ji loi ckafi you desire part-of-the-mass-of coffee [conn. ?] part-of-the-mass-of tea Do you want coffee or tea? with corresponding answers "na.e", ".enai", and "onai". Other possible answers are: .e Both 1 and 2. Both. joi Mass-mixed-and. Both mixed together. oicairo'o -- cowan@snark.thyrsus.com ...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan e'osai ko sarji la lojban