Re: ni, jei, perfectionism

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

Lojbab:
>if the truth value is unknown to the speaker then  one is not curious
>about a specific truth value, but about the truth value whatever it may be.

One is curious about what is the truth value. In English you can say
simply  "curious about the truth value". In Lojban you can't (or at
least you shouldn't).

>Perhaps you can phrase this as a sumti raising of aan indirect question,
>but I do not see the sumti raising as being quite so obvious, even if it
>is possible to come up with one.

{jei} is always used like that, so it's not that hard to find out what the
indirect question is. If you see {jei}, ask yourself whether using
{le du'u xukau} gives you the same meaning. If it does (as it practically
always will), then {jei} is not being used to mean truth value. In that
case,
if you still want to use it as truth value, then the right abstraction is
{le du'u makau du le jei...}.

>I also do not buy the direct substitution of equivalent sumti as
necessariuly
>valid in language use.  That "le jei broda du li pa" does not let me use
>"li pa" freely and interchangeably with the former expression.

No, direct substitution doesn't work in general. For example in sub-clauses.

But this should always be a valid form of reasoning:

        i ko'a broda
        i ko'a du ko'e
        i seni'ibo ko'e broda

In any case, that was only used to show why {jei} has two meanings,
not as the proof.

 >I am quite sure that you can show me examples of hidden sumti raising with
ni,
>perhaps even in the refgrammar.  But I did not think that this was the
>reason for our earlier debates over the meaning of ni, which as I recall
>turned into a dispute over klani.  Now maybe you are talking about some
other
>dispute about the meaning of ni?

There are two meanings of {ni}:

(1) {le ni broda} = {le ka broda sela'u makau}
(2) {le ni broda} = {le jaisela'u broda}

The first is the usage meaning, the second is the one defined in
the ma'oste. This exactly parallels the {jei} situation.

co'o mi'e xorxes