From - Wed Nov 12 13:03:26 1997 Message-ID: <3469EF6D.44BE@locke.ccil.org> Date: Wed, 12 Nov 1997 13:03:25 -0500 From: John Cowan Organization: Lojban Peripheral X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (WinNT; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Lojban List Subject: Re: kau References: <199711121151.GAA29738@locke.ccil.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 3271 And Rosta wrote: > Can someone tell me where {kau} is discussed in Woldemar? - Or > if not, can someone tell me what it means? Chapter 8, Section 11. > I mean {kau} in general, not just after question words. "kau" can be used after non-question words, in which case the word it is attached to is suggested as the answer to the indirect question, as in "I wonder whether it was John who shot Alice", which uses "la djan. kau" What is not defined is the use of "kau" outside "du'u" abstractions. > I seem to recall that originally kau was introduced for some > more general purpose and only latterly became restricted > in usage as a marker of indirect questions. Not AFAIK. -- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org e'osai ko sarji la lojban From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Thu Nov 13 23:01:10 1997 for ; Thu, 13 Nov 1997 23:01:01 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199711140401.XAA03402@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: John Cowan Sender: Lojban list From: John Cowan Organization: Lojban Peripheral Subject: Re: le/lo X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan Status: O X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1946 la .and. cusku di'e > > That part of the cmavo list has not been updated since the discovery > > of the "specificity" category, but "le" has always been used for > > specific things. Because of the specificity, the truthful > > applicability of the referential predicate has become logically > > irrelevant, as in my example above (which does not mean that it > > is pragmatically useless). > > I may have misunderstood you, but in the case of specific referents, > nonveridicality is useful in identifying definite referents (i.e. > in identifying the referent to the addressee), but one still > of course wishes to predicate things veridically of specific > referents. I wouldn't agree that the veridicality of any > predicate is logically irrelevant. Nor would I. By "referential predicate" I meant the (syntactic) predicate within the *le*-description. It is irrelevant to the truth value of "le cinfo cu blanu" whether the referent of "le cinfo" really is a lion, but it is most certainly relevant whether the referent really is blue. For "lo cinfo cu blanu", the referent must be both a lion and blue for the bridi to be true. This is the distinction which is captured by the term "veridical". > > a) le -discussion cu du lo -quagmire > > b) le -discussion cu du le -quagmire > > > > where (a) says that this discussion is identical with some actual > > quagmire (false), and (b) says that this discussion is > > identical with some specific thing I describe as a quagmire > > (not provably false, but bizarre). > > I don't see why (b) is bizarre. It seems perfectly OK to me. On reflection, I agree. > > "le co'e" is really "da" with a hint about the > > referent. > > I don't think I'd buy that. You are right, of course. That was a brain fart. -- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org e'osai ko sarji la lojban