Subject: Re: [lojban] Dumb answers to good questions

From: And Rosta <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 15:48:16 +0100

Adam:
#> One thing which I don't think would solve the problem completely,
#> but would at least make a step towards it would be to have some UI
#> word to flag what we're really asking about. Just as {do xu citka
#> le nanba} and {do citka le nanba xu} specify precisely what's being
#> asked about (but we can't do that with {mu'i ma} type questions).
#> The obvious candidate would be {pau}: {mu'i ma la bab pau darxi la
#> fred.} (why was it BOB that hit Fred?), {mu'ima la bab darxi pau la
#> fred.} (why did Bob HIT Fred?), and {mu'ima la bab. darxi la fred.
#> pau} (why was it FRED that Bob hit?). Still won't stop me from
#> answering the second with "He wasn't hollow enough to live in," but
#> that's life. I'm not sure why I'm not thinking {ba'e} here. Maybe
#> "emphasis" isn't what's at stake here, but focus of the question.
#
#I think that what you want here is 'kau', and that's how it's glossed
#in the book (ch 11.8): "mu'i ma la bab. kau darxi la fred.", etc.
#However, I'm reluctant to use it like this, because its meaning is so
#different from q-kau. If 'kau' were used consistently like this,
#'makau', etc. would remain a direct question, just with topic focus.
#(Then again, maybe that's not a good enough reason.)

I'd momentarily forgotten in my previous message that kau is 
supposed to be a focus marker. It's true that wh elements are
focused:

Who hit Bill?
for x such that x hit Bill, x = what?

but at the same time, IF qkau is valid lojban for indirect questions then
kau cannot be a mere focus marker and must instead be the magic thingy
that makes direct q-words indirect. Things'd probably be semantically/logically 
neater if kau were the focus marker and qkau for indirect questions were invalid, 
but that'd invalidate a HELL of lot of usage!

Must dash...

--And.