From a.rosta@ntlworld.com Mon Aug 06 17:14:45 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: a.rosta@ntlworld.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_2_0); 7 Aug 2001 00:14:45 -0000 Received: (qmail 65784 invoked from network); 7 Aug 2001 00:14:42 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l9.egroups.com with QMQP; 7 Aug 2001 00:14:42 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mta05-svc.ntlworld.com) (62.253.162.45) by mta2 with SMTP; 7 Aug 2001 00:14:42 -0000 Received: from andrew ([62.255.40.33]) by mta05-svc.ntlworld.com (InterMail vM.4.01.03.00 201-229-121) with SMTP id <20010807001439.MFUX20588.mta05-svc.ntlworld.com@andrew> for ; Tue, 7 Aug 2001 01:14:39 +0100 To: Subject: RE: [lojban] Preliminary notes on indirect questions Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2001 01:13:38 +0100 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" 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 In-Reply-To: X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 From: "And Rosta" pc: > So, I am starting from scratch, mainly to keep the rust from getting too > thick and because Nick and And have more important tasks. (Yes, but I'm doing lots of thinking about Lojban instead ;-) > 1) I don't know how deep the identity of interrogative and relative pronouns > goes. In I-E it seems present from the get-go, but I don't know how much > farther back it goes. From what little I know about languages beyond the > wildest grasp of Nostratists, the question sems not even to make sense there > -- relatives and questions seem to be handled by totally different devices, > neither really pronouns. A Derzhanski question, this one. Anyway, the logic of relatives is unproblematic, yet it doesn't seem to help much in understanding interrogatives. (If anything, it hinders, by sowing confusion.) > Anyhow, in English they are often hard to > distinguish (indeed, rarely unquestionably so), so, before we try to find an > indirect question form for some expression, we might be well advised to try a > relative clause one instead. It works amazingly often. I'd like to see some examples, because I can't think of any at all. > And, in Lojban, it > has the advantage of giving something more obviously grammatical than some of > the offerings involving {makau}. > > 2) The standard theory (not the only one nor necessarily the most > satisfactory in some particular respects, but the one all others start off > from) is that questions are sets of answers, claims, of some sort. The > various theories start to diverge on what sort of answers get in, but for the > most part the set cannot be limited to the correct answers (else the puzzle > about wondering and doubting -- though these can be dealt with). It is also > standard that the referent of a thing in indirect context is the its direct > sense. This may be so, but it's easier in some ways to derive direct questions from indirect questions rather than vice versa ("What is the time?" = "I hereby I ask you what the time is"). > Thus, the referent of an indirect question is either the sense of a > set of claims, a property of claims, then, or a set of senses of claims, a > set of propositions, then. Lojban seems to go for the latter, though some > moves tend to suggest the former as well (and the relation between the two is > so unclear as to leave the question of a middle ground open). > > 3) If an indirect question refers to a set of propositions, then the standard > way of talking about it, {le du'u}, is probably wrong in most cases, for the > speaker often does not know which proposition the knower, for example, knows > and, since this is oblique context, the various possibilities are not > reducible to a single archetype. John may be the tallest boy in the class > and the Suzy know that the tallest boy in the class went to the store but > that does not mean that, when she knows who went to the store, she knows that > John did -- for she may be unaware or indifferent to the fact that John is > the tallest boy. So, it is safer to go with {lo du'u} "some apparopriate > answer" (correct in the case of {djuno}, say). I'm always glad to see an attack on excessive le-usage. But also interesting here is the idea that a du'u selbri can denote a (nonsingleton) class of propositions. I'm 75% agnostic and 25% skeptical about this, but 100% keen to hear further justification for the idea. --And.