[lojban-beginners] Re: mo ma

["Jorge Llambías" <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On 4/21/08, Timo Paulssen <timonator@perpetuum-immobile.de> wrote:
>
> The way I understood lojbanic questions until now is like this (doesn't hold
> true for indirect questions with kau, though):
>
> The question word is kind of a placeholder for the grammatical thing you
> want to have as your answer.
> However, the way to answer isn't defined by the grammar of lojban, it's more
> like a protocol. To me saying ma is like "I want to know what sumti goes
> here", but it's not like "the lojban grammar now forces you to say a sumti
> and in all of our heads it will magically appear inside the spot where ma
> was before".

I think that's exactly right.

> So what I would answer to your question is this:
> Say what's most sensible. In this case I personally would answer with {go'i
> lo tolcitno prenu lo grana}.

Or you could answer {tolcitno .i lo grana} if you wanted to be extremely
terse.

mu'o mi'e xorxes