Subject: RE: [lojban] Another preliminary note on Indirect Questions

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2001 02:11:33 +0100

pc:
> It seems a stupid point, but indirect questions are by definition questions
> in indirect discourse. Consequently *they* can only occur as arguments of
> predicates of linguistic activity, where it would be possible to use direct
> discourse -- a quote -- instead.

It would be nice if this were true, but it isn't, at least if English is
our guide.

The magic potion changed how tall I am.
They differ in how tall they are.
Your stride length depends on how tall you are.

As I've said before, IMO the simplification is to be made by treating
direct questions as a variety of indirect question, rather than vice
versa.

> What the other things we are mainly talking
> about may be and how they are related (if at all) to indirect questions,
> needs to be worked out. The first step toward that is probably getting
> indirect questions in the ordinary sense out of the way and then getting some
> clear cases of the other things. If there are any.

Examples like the ones above seem to be harder to analyse than indirect
questions with cognitive predicates. And finding a logical generalization
to cover indirect questions in all environments is even harder. But I do
think we're making progress, thanks to Jorge's imaginative indagations.

--And.