Re: [lojban] "Any" and {ro}

Oh! So {ma kau} could come from "I don't care where I go" or some such, which is related practically, if not obviously linguistically to "any where". OK, but it doesn't he;lp much with "anywhere" itself.

From: John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com>
To: "lojban@googlegroups.com" <lojban@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2012 10:25 AM
Subject: Re: [lojban] "Any" and {ro}

I wouldn't want to make too much of interrogative pronouns in IE languages, since they are notoriously shifty (collapsing with relatives in one direction, for example). In a logical language, it is to be presumed that the roles is unmistakable. One might make a case that an "anywhere" answer to "Where are you going/ do you want to go?" somehow is derived from a sentence still in the question frame work (one member -- or all the members -- of the set of answers, I suppose). But such an extraction in Lojban should require some surface evidence and {ma kau}, at least, evidences the wrong kind of motion. I'm not sure what might work.

From: selpa'i <seladwa@gmx.de>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2012 10:07 AM
Subject: Re: [lojban] "Any" and {ro}

Am 15.08.2012 16:05, schrieb tijlan:
> That wouldn't work consistently with {du'u}. According to that
> interpretation, one would have
>
> do djuno lo du'u mi citka ma kau
> You know that I eat anything.
>
> do djuno lo du'u mi djica lo nu klama ma kau
> You know that I want to go wherever

Yes, the first example I gave isn't good. The point of this ma kau is that it appears outside of an abstraction, but of course what you show is still a problem. The usage of that ma kau would be limited to outside of abstractions.

Am 15.08.2012 16:26, schrieb John E Clifford:
> Well, {ma kau} marks an indirect question and in this usage there seems to be nothing either indirect or a question.

Well, I'm not sure that's true. Many natlangs use a Wh-question word for this construction. French has n'importe ou/quoi/qui etc, English has whatever/wherever, German has wo auch immer, wer auch immer, sonstwo... So maybe there really is a hint of a question there, if just in that the speaker indirectly talks about the possible answer without saying what it is.

For the other meanings of any, su'o/ro/no is still the way to go, but I don't think anybody argues with that anyway.

mu'o mi'e la selpa'i

-- pilno zo le xu .i lo dei bangu cu se cmene zo lojbo .e nai zo lejbo

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