ka/ni kama

[Chris Bogart <cbogart@QUETZAL.COM>]

On Sun, 5 Oct 1997, JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS wrote:
> >This seems sensible to me, it could be a
> >useful interpretation of the ka/ni distinction.  "ka" = whether, "ni" =
> >how/to what degree.
>
> Yes, that's one of the ways "ni" is used. Just as with {jei}, {ni}
> has two meanings: its official definition meaning, and its usage
> meaning. According to their definition, {jei} is a truth value
> and {ni} is an amount. According to usage, they are indirect
> questions, {jei} is "whether" and {ni} is "how much/to what degree".
> Because of this confusion I prefer to avoid them, and use
> {xukau} for "whether" and "la'u makau" for "to what degree".

Setting jei aside for a minute, could you give an example of the
two uses of "ni" and how they conflict?  I don't understand
the distinction.   Maybe a sentence whose interpretation would be
ambiguous because of the two usages?

> Once one of the two meanings has been chosen, I still don't
> think that something that is not broda can have some "ni broda".

I believe people sometimes see ghosts, but I don't believe ghosts really
exist.  So I would say {de li'i da pruxi} but {da na pruxi}.  I would like
to be able to say something can have an extent of being long, without
being long, in a perfectly parallel construction: {de ni da clani} but {da
na clani}.  The existence of the abstraction equals the truth value of the
thing abstracted only in the special cases of nu, ka, and jei.  It doesn't
relate at all with si'o, su'o, or li'i, so the "rule" that ni is bending
when it assigns values to non-broda is not really a rule of abstractors at
all, but an incorrect generalization based on the behavior of ka.

co'o mi'e kris