Subject: Re: fancu

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2001 17:10:31 -0000

la pycyn cusku di'e

>Sticking with the assertive form, "John knows whether you 
> have stopped beating your wife," would, in the case where the 
presuppositions 
> are not met, mean that John knows that the presuppositions are not 
met, that 
> the correct answer is {na'i}. 

I'm not convinced. Consider this:

"Does John know whether you have stopped beating your wife?"

1- "Yes, he does. He knows that I don't even have a wife."

2- "No, there's nothing for him to know about it. He knows
that I don't even have a wife."

I find (2) more realistic. If "I don't even have a wife" was
one of the members of the whether-answer-set, then (1) should 
be the right answer.

In Lojban, assuming {na'i} is not a member of the set of 
answers, we could say:

la djan djuno no du'u xukau mi co'u darxi lo mi speni
iki'ubo no du'u xukau mi co'u darxi lo mi speni cu jetnu

"John knows no 'whether I have stopped beating my wife'
because there isn't any 'whether I have stopped beating 
my wife' to know."

(Of course {na'i} is a perfectly ok illocutionary answer,
but the set of answers involved in indirect questions has 
to be the set of logical answers.)

mu'o mi'e xorxes