RE: TECH: Higley on "kau" + SEI

[I.Alexander.bra0122@OASIS.ICL.CO.UK]

{kau} was the subject of the first comment I posted on the list.
My interpretation of John Cowan's response is that {kau} isn't about
_"knowledge"_, it's about _abstraction_, in particular, the
_identity_ of the concept it's attached to.  So {lekau prenu}
is "the identity of the person".

Since it's a UI, it can be attached to almost anything, to denote
the identity of e.g. a logical connective.  The current official
position is that exactly _which_ member of the selma'o (or presumably,
which gismu) is used is not important, although it might indicate
something about the type of value expected.

With this interpretation, {le pakau prenu} means "the number of people",
i.e. essentially the same as {leni prenu}.

In practice, it frequently occurs inside a {du'u} abstraction,
with the side-effect of "inverting" the whole construct to refer
to the identity of whatever is tagged, within the given context.
To my mind, this means it changes the meaning of {du'u}.
Further complications arise if the {du'u} is nested, in which case
subscripts need to be used to indicate that the {kau} is relative
to an outer {du'u}.  Things might be simpler if a separate cmavo,
say {xau}, in selma'o NU, was allocated for this usage, meaning
"x1 is the identity of whatever is tagged with {kau} in [bridi]".

Colin:
> As I have said in a comment on somebody's cafe text, I don't believe that
> "se'i" works like that at all. As things stand at present, all discursives,
> like all attitudinals (other than "pei") strictly refer to the speaker's
> intentions/quality of knowledge/attitude. I have on occasion wanted a way to
> indicate somebody else's attitude etc., but I'm not convinced that it is
> desirable. ("se'i" is about whether the speaker's attitude relates to vo'a,
> not about whose attitude it is).

As I understand it, the way to indicate someone else's attitude etc.
is to use something like {sei [vo'a] jinvi}.

Iain.