| So, back to "indirect questions."
Like questions, they are sets of answers, the {kau} marking a point in a matrix where a piece may be inserted to get a paradigm (but not the only kind of) case of the sort of thing the set contains. The whole {du'u ... kau} construction is thus a property of sentences in the set. To know the answer thus is to know at least one member of the set: lo du'u ... kau (not {le}, since this is usually neither definite nor specific -- i.e., neither speaker nor hearer need know what member it is the knower knows). The same applies in other cases "decides" means "picks one" and so on (though, except for "know" there is no guarantee that the one is among the correct answers). Interestingly, we cannot say in English "She believes who the murderer is" in the same sense that we can say "know". I expect we can say this in Lojban in the same way. But we can say things like "She believes what she hears." This pretty clearly cannot be treated in the same way, for it gets the wrong thing: a number of beliefs that she has heard such-and-such, rather than the such-and-suches. So this superficially similar sounding piece is just {lo se tirna} (not the right brivla, strictly, for what is intended, but I'm not trying to be more than sketchy right now), not, say , {lo du'u ko'a tirna makau}. Now for the hard one, "Bob and Joe differ in how tall they are" /"in height" Bob is 5'6", Joe is 6'5" . {la bab frica la djous le ni ... sraji clano}{le ka ... mitre xokau leka sraji} or so. But what goes into the ...? {ce'u}? {ke'a}? Do we need something else? I suggest (very tentatively) {ce'u} and one of the bound sort that Nick seems to think common but that others see seldom: That is, we have a function here that gives indirect questions (sets of propositions) with the appropriate name (here from {la bab} and {la djous} ) . I'm even less sure what the answers with {ni} look like, since I don't see where the numbers go, but... Comments? (I don't know why I ask; I can't say "snow is white" without several people objecting because of the black snow in Kirghizistan in 1806.) |