From a-rosta@alphaphe.com Wed Aug 14 17:13:54 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: a-rosta@alphaphe.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_7_4); 15 Aug 2002 00:13:54 -0000 Received: (qmail 41331 invoked from network); 15 Aug 2002 00:13:54 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.216) by m11.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 15 Aug 2002 00:13:54 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO smtp.alphaphe.net) (217.33.150.223) by mta1.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 15 Aug 2002 00:13:54 -0000 Received: (qmail 20009 invoked by uid 101); 15 Aug 2002 00:13:51 -0000 Received: from host213-1-33-248.webport.bt.net (HELO oemcomputer) (213.1.33.248) by smtp.alphaphe.net with SMTP; 15 Aug 2002 00:13:51 -0000 To: Subject: RE: [lojban] kau -- What does it really mean?! Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 01:15:18 +0100 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 In-Reply-To: <007201c24355$d6ede030$0200a8c0@avitallap> X-EDATA: smtp.alphaphe.net 1.6.2 0/1000/N X-AntiVirus: scanned for viruses by AlphaPhe.Net (www.alphaphe.net) From: "And Rosta" X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=110020381 X-Yahoo-Profile: andjamin I don't have time to get embroiled in a rehash of all these issues, so here's just a quick response not to the content of your message but just to the subject line. Originally, kau was supposed to mark Focus. Then the problem arose of how to render indirect questions in Lojban. Because that was a difficult problem, there was no easy solution, and someone came up with the idea of using questionword + kau. It wasn't a good idea, but as I say, it was a difficult problem. Anyway, the upshot of this was that in usage, kau became meaningless; it converts direct questions into indirect questions. In my view, it can't even be seen as some kind of logical converter, because I think indirect questions are semantically more basic than direct questions. The refgram was written before a lot of this stuff was realized, so it is not a reliable source of information on this particular issue. --And.