Subject: RE: [lojban] ka + makau (was: ce'u (was: vliju'a

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2001 02:12:17 +0100

Xod:
> On Wed, 8 Aug 2001, Jorge Llambias wrote:
[...]
> It appears to me our ideas of kau are converging.
> 
> kau turns a question word into a variable of that type. makau is a sumti,
> xokau is a number, jikau is a logical value, etc.

I think this is not quite right. All Q-words, not just Q-kau, express
a variable bound by a certain quantifier with a certain scope. The
hard bit is discovering which quantifier and which scope.

What exactly {kau} does is unclear. With non-Q + kau, kau is a
focus marker. I don't yet understand whether with Q-kau it is
only (a) a focus marker, only (b) an indicator of an indirect 
question, with no logical properties of its own, or (c) both
(a-b). 

--And.