Re: Indirect questions

[JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS <jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR>]

Clark Nelson:
>As an alternative expression for someone's amount of womanliness,
>wouldn't
>le ka sela'u ce'u ko'a ninmu [kei]
>work at least as well as an indirect question using makau?

I don't think so. ce'u and makau have different meanings. What you have
there is "the property of being the extent to which ko'a is a woman".
Consider these examples:

            la meris cu zmadu la djein le ka sela'u makau ce'u ninmu
            Mary exceeds Jane in to what extent they're women.

            li piso'u cu zmadu li piso'i le ka sela'u ce'u xokau prenu cu
ninmu
            "A little" exceeds "much" in how many people are women to that
extent.

(Assuming it makes sense to talk about extent of being ninmu.)

{ce'u} is the place holder for the bearer(s) of the property.
{kau} marks the question whose answer makes the bridi true, the claim
being that there is such an answer.

>I suspect that there's always an alternative to using an indirect
>question,

Probably true.

>and that the alternative would in most cases be "better" (at
>least by my own standards) than the indirect question.

In most cases the alternative would be more cumbersome. "Better"
in the sense that it would be logically more transparent, but "worse"
in the sense that it would be almost unmanageable in ordinary
conversation (you would need to use quantifiers and the prenex).

>I imagine,
>however, that there are others who know more and/or believe differently.

i naje

co'o mi'e xorxes