Re: GLI Re: Indirect questions

[And Rosta <a.rosta@UCLAN.AC.UK>]

Jorge:
> >> But "She knew whether he was hungry" means something if he was
> >> hungry and something else if he wasn't.
> >
> >I certainly don't think that. Are you sure you really do?
>
> In the same sense that  "I am hungry" means something if I say
> it and something else if you do.

But the point about deixis is that reference varies according
to instrinsic properties of the utterance (like who said it
when and where and to who). The meaning of "She knew whether he
was hungry" doesn't vary in that way.

> >In truth-conditional terms, "She knew whether he was hungry"
> >is true iff either he's hungry and she believes he's hungry
> >or he's not hungry and she believes he's not hungry.
>
> Yes, of course I agree. That's what the proposition means.
> But the text-type "she knew whether he was hungry" can relate
> to the proposition "she knew that he was hungry" in a given
> context, just as the text type "I am hungry" can relate to the
> proposition "Jorge is hungry" in a given context.

I don't agree with that bit. In certain circumstances it can
be the case that "she knew whether he was hungry" is true iff
"she knew that he was hungry" is true, but these certain
circumstances depend on the state of the world being
described, and not on any inherent properties of the utterance.

> >> Our methods of expansion seem not to work for "She wondered
> >> whether he was hungry". What's going on here?
> >"She desires that for every x, x a se jetlai of le du`u
> >he was hungry, she knows that x is a se jetlai of le du`u
> >he was hungry."
>
> Right, you are interpreting "wonder" as "want to know".
> But then, is {kucli da} = {djica le nu/du'u djuno da}?
> Scope problems again.

{kucli} has two meanings, one where the x2 is an indirect
question, and one where it isn't. {kucli da} doesn't
mean {djica le nu/du'u djuno da}, but {kucli lo nu xu kau}
does mean {djica lo nu djuno lo nu xu kau}.

> Then we don't have an automatic way of expanding
> {broda le du'u xukau brode}, because it will depend on
> the meaning of {broda}. The expansion for {djuno} is
> different than the one for {kucli}.

That's right.

--And