Subject: Siver threads among the mold

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2001 10:54:31 EDT

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.)