[lojban-beginners] Re: Asking for connectives, or "Do you have any brothers or sisters?"

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On 9/24/05, Philip Newton <philip.newton@gmail.com> wrote:
> Would a suitable way of asking "Do you have any brothers or sisters?"
> be {pau do se bruna gi'i se mensi}? (That is, something along the
> lines of "please fill in the appropriate connective for the relations
> 'x is a brother to you' and 'y is a sister to you'".)

Yes. Of course you could also just ask {xu do se tunba}.

> I suppose the answers would be along the lines of {na gi'e} "I have no
> brothers, but I do have at least one sister"), {gi'e nai} "I have no
> sisters, but I do have at least one brother", {na gi'e nai} "No,
> neither brothers nor sisters", or {gi'e} "Yes, I have both at least
> one brother and at least one sister".

Those would be the most straightforward answers, yes. Other
connectives would be possible answers, but oddly cryptic.


> What about the forethought equivalent, presumably {pau do ge'i se
> bruna gi se mensi} -- how would one answer that? "Both" seems
> straightforwardly {ge} but what about "Brothers but no sisters", which
> would require {ge ... ginai ...} in a sentence, i.e. doesn't have one
> word that can substitute for the {ge'i} as an answer.

Even the single {ge} would be ungrammatical.

> Would the
> answerer have to be more explicit and say {mi ge se bruna ginai se
> mensi} or could they be more terse and say something like {ge ginai}?

The current grammar does not contemplate anything like that.
You could always answer with an afterthought connective even
if the question was posed in forethought mode though.

BTW, notice that:

{ge... gi nai ...} = {na ga nai ... gi ...}
{ge nai ... gi nai } = {na ga ... gi ...}

so you can always put all the meaningful info at the front. But
even so {ge}, {ge nai}, {na ga} and {na ga nai} are not grammatical
fragments.

mu'o mi'e xorxes