Date:  Wed, 10 Dec 1997 06:49:12 -0500 (EST)
Message-Id: <199712101149.GAA28245@locke.ccil.org>
Reply-To: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS <jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS <jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR>
Subject:      Re: On logji lojbo discussions
X-To:         lojban <lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu>
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Status: O
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X-From-Space-Date: Wed Dec 10 06:49:13 1997
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Lojbab:
>(The convention for other Q words besides xu, seems to be that using kau
>in a djuno expression means that a word which answers the question is what
is
>meaning asked for.   But the answer to xu is "go'i"/nago'i" which is not a
>truth value but a claim.

The answer can also be ja'a/na. That's how Lojban questions are usually
explained: they ask for a replacement word that makes the utterance true.

>Thus an English translation of a du'u xukau
>question might go like:
>
>Tell me whether <proposition x> is true
><proposition x> or
><not proposition x>

Not quite. The first should be "Tell me whether <proposition x>".
The way you have it, the corresponding direct question is
"Is <proposition x> true?", and then the yes/no answers would be:
"Yes, proposition x is true", and "No, <proposition x> is not true".

To give a more concrete example:

Tell me whether John goes to the market.
He does. (He goes to the market.)
He doesn't. (He doesn't go to the market.

Tell me whether "John goes to the market" is true.
It is. ("John goes to the market" is true.)
It isn't. ("John goes to the market" is not true.)

>I am not entirely convinced that these are answrs to English "whether

You are right, as you had them they were not.

>We have a convention like many languages that repeating a claim is
>saying  yes to a yes/no question.  But I am not sure that "whether" is a
>yes/no question.

I don't see what else could it be. ("Whether" is also used for {ji}
questions,
as in "he told me whether he'd go to Paris or to Rome", which is in a
sense two  yes/no questions in one.)

In this regard, the case of Esperanto is interesting. Like Lojban, it has
a yes/no question word: "cxu". Now, in Esperanto (like in English) indirect
questions use the same words as direct questions. And what is
"whether" in Esperanto? Of course, it's "cxu".

co'o mi'e xorxes