Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 07:02:44 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199712101202.HAA28501@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Sender: Lojban list From: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Subject: Re: ni, jei, perfectionism X-To: lojban To: John Cowan Status: O X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2095 X-From-Space-Date: Wed Dec 10 07:02:47 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU >>But you seemed to think that the truth value use of {jei} was somehow well >>established.] > >It is established by the prescriptive cmavo list. Right, but not by use. >In English we are prone to saying "I know whether x is true", But if indeed >we do know, then why do we not say "I know THAT x is true" or "I >know THAT x is false." Are you serious? There can be zillions of reasons. We may not want to give that additional information. Or we may not have it, e.g. changing the pronoun: "She knows whether x is true, but she won't tell us." >If I am a teacher and I say that we will discuss in class "whether X is true" >and I know that X is indeed true, Then we will spend no time discussing >the stated indirect question, but instead will be discussing "The fact that >x is true" and perhaps "WHY x is true". You'd make for an authoritative teacher then! Other teachers might really mean it when they say they will discuss "whether X is true". Obviously it has a different meaning than discussing "that X is true". If you say one when you mean the other, that is not a problem of the language. >In the forner case, what appears to me an indirect question is not really - >it is an English idiom, and there is a non-indirect-question that can >substitute. In the second, either a different indirect question is being >discussed, or it is a fact that is being discussed. I was not aware that people used indirect questions as idioms to mean something else. Is this a commonly accepted fact, or is it something you just thought up for this argument? > I was trying to claim that Lojban >is not necessarily like any one person's usage, and that Nick did not seem >to adopt your usage implied that at that time the question was still open. >Since then, 95% of all Lojban usage in the record is one 2 month email >conversation between you and Goran and Chris with occasional others >chiming in. I can't believe that my conversation with Goran is 95% of the Lojban I've written. Or by "the record" you mean the subset of published Lojban text that you have separated? co'o mi'e xorxes