Subject: Re: [lojban] tautologies

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 05:02:23 -0500

At 09:15 AM 2/10/02 -0500, [email-masked] wrote:
>In a message dated 2/9/2002 4:04:37 PM Central Standard Time, 
>[email-masked] writes:
>>But you're approaching this backwards. You say: "{makau broda}
>>is an indirect question and therefore it only makes sense in
>>subordinate clauses. I refuse therefore to consider what it might
>>mean as a free floating clause." I want to say: "We more or less
>>understand what {makau broda} means as a subordinate clause, but
>>in Lojban it is also grammatical as a free floating clause. Is
>>there a possible generlization of the meaning so as to cover this
>>case, or are we forced to declare it nonsense?"
>
>Well, as a fundamentalist in Lojban, I point out thaat, although {kau} is 
>grammatical outside of subordinate clauses, it is meaningless since it is 
>the mark of an indirect question and that is its only function. Alos, of 
>course, we do not know enough about how indirect questions work (there are 
>at least three theories on that, none of them definitive nor more than 
>plausibly false) to suggest a reasonable generalization to illicit 
>cases. And also there is the question of whether following English habits 
>here will give the clearest and most useful solution to presently 
>perceived problems or whether another approach is better. None of this 
>says that what you are doing is wrong, necessarily, but it is clearly 
>unjustified at the moment.

I think that if there are (at least) 3 theories of indirect questions which 
are consistent with Lojban semantics for kau in subordinate clauses, we 
would have to examine what each theory would imply about non-subordinate 
indirect questions were they to exist. Perhaps they would all lead to 
similar enough conclusions that Spanglish interpretation is acceptable (or 
at least a subset/component of what is an acceptable interpretation).

lojbab
--
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org