Date: Wed, 19 Nov 1997 08:05:09 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199711191305.IAA13938@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: And Rosta Sender: Lojban list From: And Rosta Organization: University of Central Lancashire Subject: Re: Indirect questions X-To: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 4085 X-From-Space-Date: Wed Nov 19 08:05:10 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU > >> >> da poi danfu lu xu mi badri li'u zo'u ko'a djuno da > >> > > >> >A somewhat off-topic question, but maybe this should > >> >be "...danfu la'e lu xu mi badri li'u"? > >> Yes, definitely. > >I don't see why. {lu xu mi badri li`u} itself refers to a question. > > Yes, a morphological question, but I think that's not what we > want. I mean that the text {xu mi badri} is itself an act of questioning, in the same way as "hello" and "coi" are verbal acts of greeting. > {lu xu se badri mi li'u} is different from {lu xu mi badri li'u} > for example. They're different questions morphologically, but > they mean the same thing. It's the meaning that interests me. They're different texts, but they're both questions, and they both are questions about the same thing. > >So {lo danfu be lu xu mi badri li`u} refers to the answer to the > >question, I'm not sure whether the answer is a text or a bit > >of information (a truth value, in this instance). > > Two points: > > (1) In my opinion {le danfu} and {le se danfu} are the same > type of thing. If one is a text then so is the other. But the text is > not what I'm interested in. For example, given some text: > > - xu do badri > - le mi mlatu cu morsi > > Then I could say: {lu le mi mlatu cu morsi li'u cu danfu > lu xu do badri li'u}, but when I say {ko'a djuno le du'u xukau > mi badri} I don't mean {ko'a djuno le du'u le mi mlatu cu > morsi}. OK. But why are you so sure that {danfu} is the appropriate selbri? {la`e lu le mi mlatu cu morsi} is not what one knows if one knows le du`u xu kau do badri. I seem to be missing a bit of your reasoning. > (2) The answer in any case is never a truth value. > The simplest answers to {xu do badri} are {mi badri} > or {mi na badri} (or their equivalents in terms of {go'i}). > The answer is NOT a truth value. (Of course there > can be all manner of other in-between answers, etc.) You may be right, but it's not clear to me that you are. I take {xu do badri} to mean Bring it about that for every x, a truthvalue of {do badri}, I know that x is truthvalue of {do badri}. I suppose the "answer" to that command would be some information such as a list of everything that is a truthvalue of {do badri}. You seem to be following some alternate reasoning, but I can't yet see what it is. > >I don't know what {la`e lu xu mi badri li`u} refers to. > > {la'e lu ko'a badri li'u} is {le du'u ko'a badri}. With a question > it's not so straightforward because {xu} escapes the boundaries > of {du'u} but not those of {lu}. Same goes about {mi}. But other > than that I think it is clear. {la'e} extracts the proposition from > the text. So if {xu do badri} means Bring it about that for every x, a truthvalue of {do badri}, I know that x is truthvalue of {do badri}. then {la`e lu xu do badri} means one of the following: - For every x, a truthvalue of {do badri}, I know that x is truthvalue of {do badri}. - x is truthvalue of {do badri}. - do badri To me, the first of these makes the most sense. {la`e lu ko klama li`u} would be "do klama". And {xu do badri} would be equivalent to something like {gau ko mi djuno le du`u xu kau do badri}. ["gau" is a guess at the appropriate BAI] > >But given that {mi badri} is a statement, but {la`e lu mi > >badri li`u} refers not to a statement but rather to a proposition > >or state-of-affairs wherein I am sad, I would conclude that > >{la`e lu xu mi badri li`u} refers not to a question but rather > >to the proposition being asked about, > > Not to a sentence-question, right! But that's just what I need > for the x2 of djuno, a proposition (a du'u). A proposition that > serves as answer to the propositional question {la`e lu xu > mi badri li`u}. When I say {ko'a djuno le du'u xukau mi badri} > I am not making reference to any sentential question. I'm > claiming koha's knowledge of a state-of-affairs. I just aren't convinced that {le danfu be la`e lu xu do badri li`u} refers to the proposition you want, even if x2 of danfu can be a proposition rather than a text. --And