Re: Hans Christian Andersen: countercomments

[John Cowan <cbmvax!snark.thyrsus.com!cowan>]

la .iVAN. cusku di'e

> Note that {tu'a} doesn't solve too many problems.  What does {mi troci
> tu'a le vorme} mean?  Tried to what the door?  Open it, close it,
> break it, take it off its hinges?  The literal translation of {mi
> troci le vorme} in Bulgarian means `I taste the door' or maybe `I test
> the door' (try to use it, see whether it works properly).  In all
> natural languages that I can think of, "want sthg" means `want to have
> sthg' (whatever "have" may mean).  In Lojban {djica tu'a lo nolraixli}
> may mean `want to strangle a m.n.m.', `want to see off a m.n.m.'...

Absolutely.  "tu'a" is an explicit signal that the speaker is being vague.
Lojban Central experimented with the model "if it's not a NU-clause, it's
automatically transformed into one", but there are many counterexamples, of
which "le fasnu" (the event) is the simplest; this is clearly an event
although not expressed as a NU-clause.  Ditto any gismu in which one of
the places is "meant" to take an event.  "tu'a" is inescapable.

> >  I remember your phrase "UI depend on the deontology of the speaker". Well,
> >  I went for "kau refers to the knower of the sentence it is in". Thus
> >  la djan. djuno ledu'u ri klama zo'ekau
> >  means John knows where he's going, not that John's going somewhere, and I
> >  know where. Right?
>
> You mean to say that {kau} can only be used in a "knowing" sentence?
> One with {djuno} as a predicate?  Come on, Nick.  This is totally absurd.

"kau" actually has nothing to do with knowledge as such: only in a "djuno"
bridi does it refer to knowledge.  In a "krici" bridi it would refer to
belief.  A more reasonable explication of "kau" is as follows:

There are various selbri in the language, including "djuno", "jdice",
and the like, which take or may take a "ledu'u" argument indicating what is
known, decided, perceived, or what have you.  Example:

        mi djuno le du'u la djan. citka loi gerku
        I know that John eats dog.

"kau" is a marker of selma'o UI which can be attached to any word or phrase
in such a "le du'u" abstraction.  It indicates that the object of knowing,
deciding, perceiving, etc. is not the truth of the whole bridi, but the
identity of the indicated portion, thus:

        mi djuno le du'u da kau citka loi gerku
        I know the-statement-that something [marked] eats the-mass-of dog
        I know who eats dog.

Here what is known is not that "something eats dog", but rather, which something
it is that eats dog.  Knowing could of course be replaced by perceiving or
any of the others.  The marked word may be a question word, but no actual
question is produced thereby; this is convenient in cases like:

        mi jdice le du'u la djan. jikau la djordj. klama le zarci
        I decide the-statement-that John or[marked] George goes-to the store
        I decide whether John or George goes to the store.

This indicates that what I decide is the value of the truth function
connecting "John goes to the store" and "George goes to the store".

--
cowan@snark.thyrsus.com         ...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan
                e'osai ko sarji la lojban