Re: replies re. ka & mamta be ma

[ucleaar <ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk>]

Jorge:
> > To allow for knowing noone comes, I suggested:
> >    da zohu koha djuno le duhu da du lohi klama
> Say that the following is true:
>        ko'a djuno le du'u lo prenu ba klama
>        She knows that at least someone will come.
> Now, it is not clear to me that I could not claim from that that:
>        ko'a djuno le du'u makau ba klama
>        For some word(s) X, it is true that she knows    X will come.
                                                      lahe
> My replacement formulation would allow it. Your set formulation
> would not, because she doesn't necessarily know the full set
> of comers.

"She knows that at least someone will come" doesn't mean "She knows
who will come", so I'm glad my method doesn't work. If you mean
"For some of the people who will come, she knows that they will come",
then:
    da zohu koha djuno le duhu da cmima lohi klama
or
    da zohu koha djuno le duhu da klama

> > > Just as in the case of questions we ask our interlocutor to fill
> > > with the appropriate sumti, here we claim that there is a _sumti_
> > > that makes the statement true, not a referent of da.
> > This is surely wrong if you mean sumti in the syntactic sense.
> > "Who went" doesn't ask "which words could replace 'who'?".
> In Lojban it does. At least that is how questions in Lojban are
> explained. I am not saying that that is how "who" works in English,
> but in Lojban, all you are asking of your interlocutor is to fill
> in the blank.

But when you try to apply this to 'indirect' interrogatives, things
get rather strained: "there exists a word such that she knows that
an entity that that word could describe will come". It's easier
to simplify to "Ex she knows that x will come".

How do you get your method to do "Ex she knows that x is the set
containing everyone who will come"? "There are various words such
that she knows that the entities that these words could describe
will come"? How do you distinguish between the two meanings (she
knows of some of the comers, vs all of the comers)?

> > If you mean sumti in the semantic sense, I agree. Note that if
> > Tim and Tom went, then "she knows who went" entails that she knows
> > Tim went and she knows Tom went. But replacing "who" by Tom makes
> > the statement true. So your method may need refining.
> Are you saying that {la tom} is not a valid answer to {ma klama}?
> I think whatever is valid for {ma} should also be valid for {makau}
> even though in English this is not the case. Why should we follow
> the English model?

I'd thought they were supposed to follow the English model. It
doesn't matter whether they do, so long as we can express both
  da zohu koha djuno le duhu da klama
  da zohu koha djuno le duhu da du lohi klama

> > Also, refer to my Tim/Tom reservation above.
> I think that is precisely what fails in your {lo'i} formulation.
> Even if for {makau} it could make sense to require full knowledge, for
> {mokau} it would be impossible, and the rule should be consistent.

Sometimes we want one, sometimes the other. So we need both.

> > > Just as questions say "replace Q with appropriate thing of same
> > > grammar so as to make the sentence true", indirect questions say
> > > "there is an appropriate replacement for Q-kau that makes the
> > > sentence true".
> > I accept this is one way of describing what happens, but not necessarily
> > the optimal way. There are ways of doing semantics of all interrogatives
> > without invoking this notion of "appropriate replacement of same grammar".
> Could you expand on that? It sounds interesting.

I've already expanded on 'indirect' interrogatives. As for direct
interrogatives, "Who came?" would be:

  Ex, please cause that I know that da klama
                               that da du lohi klama

> {malglico} is Lojbanic nonsense modeled on something that makes sense
> in English. It comes after the language design. It shouldn't affect the
> justifications for anything in the design.

This is a narrow definition. If Lojban has obligatory tense indication,
built into the design, and not nonsensical, people would deem that
malglico.

---
And