Date: Fri, 5 Dec 1997 20:23:49 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199712060123.UAA11891@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Sender: Lojban list From: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Subject: Re: GLI Re: Indirect questions X-To: lojban To: John Cowan Status: O X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1496 X-From-Space-Date: Fri Dec 5 20:23:58 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU And: > In certain circumstances it can >be the case that "she knew whether he was hungry" is true iff >"she knew that he was hungry" is true, but these certain >circumstances depend on the state of the world being >described, and not on any inherent properties of the utterance. Well, an utterance inherently requires a state of the world in order to exist. Even if you disagree with that, I don't see what we gain by restricting {la'e lu ... li'u} to those meanings that arise from the _inherent_ properties of uttering the text, rather than to those meanings that arise from any given uttering of the text. To those worried about the horribly arcane nature of this discussion, we are trying to decide whether {le sedu'u xukau ko'a badri} makes sense, as in {mi cusku le sedu'u xukau ko'a badri}, which to me means "I say whether she is sad". >> But then, is {kucli da} = {djica le nu/du'u djuno da}? > >{kucli} has two meanings, one where the x2 is an indirect >question, and one where it isn't. {kucli da} doesn't >mean {djica le nu/du'u djuno da}, but {kucli lo nu xu kau} >does mean {djica lo nu djuno lo nu xu kau}. But doesn't this go against the spirit of the language? Why not accept two meanings for {nitcu} then? >> Then we don't have an automatic way of expanding >> {broda le du'u xukau brode}, because it will depend on >> the meaning of {broda}. The expansion for {djuno} is >> different than the one for {kucli}. > >That's right. Not very nice, though. co'o mi'e xorxes