From a.rosta@lycos.co.uk Wed Dec 29 14:14:02 1999
X-Digest-Num: 323
Message-ID: <44114.323.1761.959273825@eGroups.com>
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 1999 22:14:02 -0000
From: "And Rosta" <a.rosta@lycos.co.uk>
Subject: RE: "what i have for dinner"
X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 1761

> From: "la kinin" <MTPEPPER@prodigy.net>
>
> «li'osa'a But more importantly, "I wonder who..." can't be "for all x, I
> wonder whether x..." since there are a lot of x's that I do not know or
> believe about, and many that I actively believe do not exist. li'osa'a»
>
> ienai na'igo'i (as close as I could get to «Au contraire!»)
>
> Pe'i, in order to «wonder who came», you ba'e must wonder if Julius Cæsar
> came, or the number 4 zo'o, if only on a subconscious level (this
> level may
> be so deeply buried that it is part of diciding about whom to wonder, but
> it's still there).
>
> Ja'o, I think a good paraphrase of «mi kucli ledu'u makau klama» is «roda
> zo'u mi kucli lejei da klama» (even though it doesn't capture every nuance
> of the inarguably useful «kau»). Note my use of «jei», the
> considerably less controversial truth-value abstactor, to translate the
> English «whether».

People used to use {jei} for "whether", until it was realized that if
le jei da klama is TRUE, then you are claiming that ro da zo'u mi kucli
TRUE -- which is not what you want to claim at all. Simplifying somewhat,
I suggested a couple of years ago something loosely along the lines of

  ro da ro de poi jei da klama zo'u mi djica le nu mi djuno le du'u
     de jei da klama

I initiated the thread last month because this 'solution' didn't seem to
generalize to all cases where English subordinate interrogatives or
Lojban {kau} could be used. And I *still* haven't found the requisite
mental athleticism to get to grips with the solutions proposed by
others yet!

--And.