Subject: A serious but ungeneralized new attempt on Q-kau

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 01:47:46 +0100

Okay, here's the context, as a reminder.

In English there's a construction normally called 'interrogative',
but this term is a bit misleading, because it has to do with
questions only in the prototypical case, not in all cases, so
I'll rename it 'interrogativoid'.

It remains a matter of dispute whether there is a semantic
unity to the grammatically-defined class of interrogativoids.
I intuit that there is a unity, but I definitely don't know
what it is.

For the prototypical interrogativoids that have to do with
indirect questions, it was decided to render these in Lojban
using Q-kau.

Then Q-kau was extended to render in Lojban all English
interrogativoids.

Then Jorge came up with a general characterization of the
meaning of Q-kau. This meant that Q-kau could be meaningfully 
extended to new grammatical contexts such as main bridi.

However, Jorge's general characterization was notional rather
than logically explicit, and until we have a logically explicit
characterization of Q-kau, we are building on quicksand.

So we still have the goal of finding a logically explicit 
characterization of Q-kau. This has to proceed on a case-by-case
basis, treating separately the genuinely interrogative-like
cases and the heterogenous non-interrogative-like cases. Once
we've done that, we'll have the full logical picture, and will
be able to see whether we can formally define Q-kau, or whether
Q-kau is the wrong thing for the job, and so on.

So now what follows is a new start at attempting to render in logically
explicit form the meaning of an interrogative-like case (with 'know')
and the meaning of a non-interrogative-like case (with 'change').
For future reference, I name the analysis:

The Extension-ce'u approach (Version 1)

1.
fadni jboselsku: 
ko'a djuno lodu'u ma kau prami ma kau
"She knows who loves who"

in explicit form:

(ro) de da poi ke'a ge jetnu gi du'u de -is-extension-of lodu'u 
ce'u prami ce'u zo'u ko'a djuno da

The 'extension' of X is the set of all ordered n-tuples of values
such that when they bind the ce'u variables, the bridi to which the
ce'u belong becomes true.

2.
fadni jboselsku: 
??lodu'u makau fonxyjudri cu cenba (be lodu'u ce'u jetnu??)
(NOT "le fonxyjudri be mi cenba")
"My phonenumber has changed"

in explicit form:

de da poi ke'a du'u de -is-extension-of lodu'u ce'u fonxyjudri be
mi zo'u da jetnybinxo [= change-from-false-to-true]

3.
fadni jboselsku: 
ko'a fo'e frica lodu'u ce'u prami ma kau
"Ko'a and Fo'e differ in who they love"

in explicit form:

no da poi de zo'u ke'a -is-extension-of lodu'u de prami ce'u zo'u
na ku ge ko'a gi fo'a me de

[Not all that good, that rendition; brain is dying.]

4.
"What I have for dinner depends on what's in the fridge"
"What shirt I wear depends on where I'm going"
fadni jboselsku: 
??lodu'u mi crekydasni ma kau cenba ??lodu'u ce'u jetnu kei fo
lo??nu mi klama ma kau

-- I'm too tired to attempt this very difficult one.

--And.