On 13 October 2012 01:04, gleki <gleki.is...@gmail.com> wrote:
In the parallel thread I completely forgot to explain why I thought {kau} could be used for focus of any sentence.Look at the following example:[.i paunai ma zekri prenu .i mi djuno lo du'u makau zekri prenu .i mi djuno lo du'u la .djan. kau zekri prenu] .i la .djan. kau zekri prenuYeah, I don't know why you'd think the kau gets preserved. {makau} acts as one single unit, and gets replaced entirely when you want to insert the "answer" to the indirect question.
Now imagine that we omit the sentences in brackets and let the context decide what's going on here.Even then it's pretty simple to reconstruct first three sentences if only the last one is given.But it just means that every time you use {kau} without any questions (even indirect questions), even then it doesn't mean that those questions are absent.They still EXIST. They are just omitted by the speaker but can be easily resurrected from the sentences that are actually said.Really it would be very verbous to say.i paunai ma zekri prenu .i mi djuno lo du'u makau zekri prenu .i mi djuno lo du'u la .djan. kau zekri prenu.....................
It's just not worth it.Or we could just say {la djan zekri prenu}. In a real conversation, the difference between the two sentences, with and without kau, is purely textual, AFAICT. Using {kau} conveys no extra meaning, and therefore leads me to believe that it's pointless to use.However, I doubt a bit that it is {kau}, not any other UI-cmavo that can serve this purpose.Do we have a generalised UI-cmavo like we have {su'u} as a generalised NU-cmavo?{ge'e} speaks about emotions so it won't work.Guys, it's ba'e. Can we please stop trying to use kau for things other than indirect questions? :)
--If you want to say "It's John, and not someone else, that is the criminal" then why are you all pining for {la djan kau co'e} rather than {ba'e la djan co'e} ?Next, {paunai} is defined as a rhetorical question. I don't know exactly what "rhetorical" means. For me this glossword includes some emotions. But if {paunai} is just the opposite of {pau} and {pau} is just a question marker then for me {paunai=kau}.A rhetorical question is a sentence that appears to be a question, but isn't actually asking anything. "Who could *do* such a thing!?" could be a rhetorical question. {kau} is not for "questions that aren't questions"; {kau} is for *indirect questions*. Those are both *different* things, and therefore have *different* cmavo, albeit both UI..i mi'e la tsani mu'o