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RE: [lojban] ka + makau (was: ce'u (was: vliju'a
Xod:
> On Wed, 8 Aug 2001, Jorge Llambias wrote:
[...]
> It appears to me our ideas of kau are converging.
>
> kau turns a question word into a variable of that type. makau is a sumti,
> xokau is a number, jikau is a logical value, etc.
I think this is not quite right. All Q-words, not just Q-kau, express
a variable bound by a certain quantifier with a certain scope. The
hard bit is discovering which quantifier and which scope.
What exactly {kau} does is unclear. With non-Q + kau, kau is a
focus marker. I don't yet understand whether with Q-kau it is
only (a) a focus marker, only (b) an indicator of an indirect
question, with no logical properties of its own, or (c) both
(a-b).
--And.