Subject: Re: [lojban] Numbers

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 11:55:14 EST

In a message dated 3/14/2001 5:49:28 AM Central Standard Time, [email-masked] 
writes:

> <It works both ways. If xo is standalone, you are asking for any number;
> if it's in a context, you are asking for a digit or whatever fits in that
> context.
> 
> All the question words work that way.>
> 

So, {xo} floating freely (i.e., not in a string of PA) can take any PA-string 
as an answer (well, any that have currently got accepted or being tested 
interps). 
In a PA string, it is asking for an appropriate replacement, presumably a 
digit (or suchlike, if we allow Lojbab's -- and cowan's? -- strangenesses). 
So, for example,
{xonono} "How many hundreds" Clearly, {no,..., so} are appropriate answers. 
What about {reci}? What, even more trickily, about {nosobi} "We didn't get 
to 100, even; 98"? I think the answer here is always "Yes". Similarly, {xo 
ki'o} asks how many thousands but could be answered {nosomuze}. I do think 
that in the middle of a string, only a digit works: {muxovo} can only take 
{no...so} and similarly {xamuxo}.
On the other hand, at the end of a string of {no} I think the interval opens 
up again:
{panoxo} is "a hundred and what?" and so {zere} is permissible, blotting out 
the {no} in the process. (And, of course, {nozere} -- "What 100, we only got 
72.")
Does this sound about right?