Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 14:43:07 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199711201943.OAA14515@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: John Cowan Sender: Lojban list From: John Cowan Organization: Lojban Peripheral Subject: Re: Indirect questions X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1767 X-From-Space-Date: Thu Nov 20 14:43:16 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU la xorxes. cusku di'e > I suppose we need to know what {danfu} is supposed to mean. > I think that you either have { danfu } or { > danfu }, or maybe we can have both, but I don't think > you can have a mix. If I'm right then you must have either: > {ko'a djuno le danfu be la'e lu ... li'u} or {ko'a djuno la'e le danfu > be lu ... li'u}, because the x2 of djuno is a du'u, not a text. I think "danfu" is very broad; the x1 or the x2 could be a person as well. I agree that "danfu" works better if the x1 and the x2 are, er, of the same object class. > >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}. > > That's asking for too much. For example, you are asking > the person not only that they respond with the truth but that > they convince you that they're saying the truth (otherwise > you wouldn't _know_ that what they say it true). Maybe that > really is implicit in questions? I don't know. It not only asks too much, but it fails to capture many common uses of questions. For example, I may ask "Is p true?" when I already know that p (or that not-p), in order to test the listener's truthfulness. On a psychological test, this appears in the form "Have you ever hated your parents?"; in domestic life, "Did you eat the cookies?". > I would have said {xu do badri} means: repeat this > statement replacing the question word so as to make it > a true statement. The replacement for {xu} is in a first > instance either {na} or {ja'a}, and ususally you will repeat > by using {go'i}. I agree. -- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org e'osai ko sarji la lojban