Re: ni, jei, perfectionism

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

>>It would not be so difficult to disprove. Just find three or four quotes
>>where it wasn't used as such. Or maybe even one would be of interest.
>
>Unless the person gave the translation, it is not necessarily clear that an
>indirect question was intended.

Ok, I'll settle for a couple of examples where it can be reasonably argued
that an indirect question was not intended. [I'm quite certain you could
not find them, so I'm not suggesting that you waste time looking for them.
But you seemed to think that the truth value use of {jei} was somehow well
established.]

> It also isn't clear whether the fact that
>something CAN be translated as an indirect question means that it actually
>should be.

Well, And was not happy with indirect questions until he satisfied himself
on how they could be explained in terms of standard logical expressions,
but somehow I suspect that's not what you mean.

 >>My rampant use of du'u? Could you elaborate?
>
>I was correctly afraid that you would take that as an implied criticism.
>It is not.

My dictionary says: "rampant: marked by a menacing wildness,
extravagance, or absence of restraint". Perhaps I was again
misunderstanding one of your native speaker idioms... :)

 >Consider "casnu", where casnu le jei broda is one of the usages that
>Nick made of the word.
>
>If you are discussing the fact that something is true or false,
>then you could easily use tu'a lejei  implying le du'u la jet. jei broda
>or le du'u la jit jei broda.


Yes, any of these indirect questions work:

        casnu le du'u xukau broda
        "discussing whether broda"

        casnu le du'u makau jei broda
        casnu le du'u makau du le jei broda
        "discussing what is the truth value of the proposition 'broda'"

>In English, we might use the indirect question formulation for either
>type of expression "I discussed whether broda is true" sounds like an
>indirect question, but if I indeed know that it is true, then most likely I
>really am discussing the fact that it is true and not the indirect question
>of whether it is true.  But when making a statement about personal
knowledge
>or actions involving a not specified value, we don't NEED to use an
indirect
>question in Lojban, and with truth values that are known but unspecified,
>it may seem awkward.

I really don't know what you're getting at. They are slightly different
indirect
questions, but they're both indirect questions.

>Skipping djuno, which can cause problems just because of its place
structure,
>we could do "I say who went to the store" as
>mi cusku ledu'u makau klama le zarci

I would like that to be so, but it isn't. According to the gismu list the x2
of cusku
is a text, not a du'u, so you'd have to say {cusku le sedu'u makau klama}.
I think that that works, but And is not yet convinced.

>or we could say
>mi cusku le cmene be le klama be le zarci

Yes, but saying their name doesn't mean that you're saying
that they go to the market. "I said who went to the market"
means something different than "I said the name of the one
who went to the market".

The second one could be an answer to "What name did you
say when they asked you what was your name?" You said
the name of someone who went to the market, but you didn't
say that they went to the market.

>or mi skicu le klama be le zarci

You're changing the example here. You wouldn't say {mi skicu
le du'u makau klama le zarci}. You could say {mi skicu fo le du'u
makau klama le zarci}.

>When there is no debate or uncertainty as to the value of the variable
>in question, then "indirect question" seems a misnomer in English, and
>suggests that the style is not necessarily preferable in Lojban.

But indirect questions have nothing to do with certainty. This is a
perfectly
good use of an indirect question:

            roda birti ledu'u makau klama le zarci
            Everybody is certain of who it is that went to the market.

>(I say
>this noting that my original use of kau was not specifically limited to
>marking indirect questions and would have applied to all of these, but the
>Book labels it only as an indirect question marker, rather than as an
>unspecified valued variable marker.

I don't understand the distinction you're trying to make here.

 >> So I'm baffled that you would
>>describe my use of du'u as rampant
>
>Maybe you do a lot of talking about what is
known/opined/understood/beleived
>in your writing %^).

Yes, maybe I do. Don't you as well? Read any of your posts in English
and count how many times you use indirect questions per paragraph.
Lots of times. (The above sentence of yours is an example.)

>The judgement that it is "bad" is ONLY because people make judgements just
like
>you just have, that Lojban is like Jorge' usage of Lojban which is an
>invalid generalization.

But that was made to counter your claim that Lojban is like Nick's usage.
Nick used {jei} for indirect questions. I contend that that was wrong with
the formal definition of {jei} and that I don't see people now insisting
with
that usage, after it was discussed why it is wrong. In no way do I want to
imply that my usage should be taken as an example of good style in
general.

co'o mi'e xorxes