Date: Tue, 2 Dec 1997 13:15:31 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199712021815.NAA25459@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: And Rosta Sender: Lojban list From: And Rosta Organization: University of Central Lancashire Subject: GLI Re: Indirect questions X-To: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Status: RO Content-Length: 1017 Lines: 29 Jorge: > >I don't see that xu kau is deictic at all. "She wondered whether > >he was hungry" does not vary in meaning according to when and where > >who says it to who. > > But "She knew whether he was hungry" means something if he was > hungry and something else if he wasn't. I certainly don't think that. Are you sure you really do? In truth-conditional terms, "She knew whether he was hungry" is true iff either he's hungry and she believes he's hungry or he's not hungry and she believes he's not hungry. > Our methods of expansion seem not to work for "She wondered > whether he was hungry". What's going on here? "She desires that for every x, x a se jetlai of le du`u he was hungry, she knows that x is a se jetlai of le du`u he was hungry." > >I predict that if this is left to ordinary usage, words like > >"bacru" and "zo" (and many many others) will become homonymous. > > Probably, but we should at least try to avoid that. It depends. Lojbab appears not to want us to try to avoid homonymy. --And