[lojban-beginners] Re: How versatile is "nu"?

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 10:45 PM, Ian Johnson <blindbravado@gmail.com> wrote:
> I suppose that makes sense. I also suppose that what I should've said would
> be "I know what the truth value of {bridi} is", which is in and of itself an
> indirect question...gah.

Right, in that case you could use the "truth value" meaning of "jei", as in:

   mi djuno lo du'u makau jei <bridi>

but it's just more verbiage added to the simpler "xukau" form. And to
be consistent, the direct question to use should be:

   ma jei <bridi>

instead of the simpler:

   xu <bridi>

> Would really be nice IMO to come up with some sort
> of mechanism to ascend beyond indirect questions altogether, but I don't
> think I'm anywhere near metalinguistic enough to come up with one. I wonder
> if there are any natural languages that do something completely different
> from them...

Well, in English you can avoid them most of the time. You can say "I
know your name" instead of "I know what your name is", or "I know the
number of apples in the basket" instead of "I know how many apples
there are in the basket", and I guess "I know if you are tired" is the
way to avoid the "whether" indirect question.. But that doeasn't
really work in Lojban because the object of "djuno" has to be a
proposition.

mu'o mi'e xorxes