Date: Tue, 21 Oct 1997 18:46:18 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710212346.SAA07982@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Sender: Lojban list From: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Subject: Re: Indirect questions X-To: lojban To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1518 Lines: 43 Clark Nelson: >As an alternative expression for someone's amount of womanliness, >wouldn't >le ka sela'u ce'u ko'a ninmu [kei] >work at least as well as an indirect question using makau? I don't think so. ce'u and makau have different meanings. What you have there is "the property of being the extent to which ko'a is a woman". Consider these examples: la meris cu zmadu la djein le ka sela'u makau ce'u ninmu Mary exceeds Jane in to what extent they're women. li piso'u cu zmadu li piso'i le ka sela'u ce'u xokau prenu cu ninmu "A little" exceeds "much" in how many people are women to that extent. (Assuming it makes sense to talk about extent of being ninmu.) {ce'u} is the place holder for the bearer(s) of the property. {kau} marks the question whose answer makes the bridi true, the claim being that there is such an answer. >I suspect that there's always an alternative to using an indirect >question, Probably true. >and that the alternative would in most cases be "better" (at >least by my own standards) than the indirect question. In most cases the alternative would be more cumbersome. "Better" in the sense that it would be logically more transparent, but "worse" in the sense that it would be almost unmanageable in ordinary conversation (you would need to use quantifiers and the prenex). >I imagine, >however, that there are others who know more and/or believe differently. i naje co'o mi'e xorxes