Re: whether (was Re: ni, jei, perfectionism)

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

>> In English we are prone to saying "I know whether x is true",  But if indeed
>> we do know, then why do we not say "I know THAT x is true" or "I
>> know THAT x is false."
>
>Because they don't mean the same thing, and the "whether" meaning
>is some times more appropriate. For example, "She knows whether
>x is true" is a perfectly sensible thing to say (especially if
>I don't know whether x is true).

But SHE knows, so why is it not "She knows the truth value of x" which is no
longer an indirect question, and still does not require the speaker to also
know what the truth value is.

I suspect that it is possible to turn any factual statement using djuno
into an indirect question in the way that English does, or even more than
one.

mi djuno ledu'u la djan. klama le zarci
Means  I know THAT John went to the store literallym but this also
can be reflected in English with 3 indirect questions, one of which
is unquestionably to me the same in meaning:
I know WHETHER John went to the store.
and the other two, seem to be the same but with different emphases:
I know where John went.
I know who went to the store.

If the person who knows is other0than the speaker, and the speaker does not
know the value, then the speaker is precluded from filling in the
predication completely and in English has to use an indirect question
or a relative clause construction.  I don't see much difference between:
I know where John went (indirect question).
I know the place where John went (relative clause).
Even a whether indirect question can become a relative clause
I know the truth value that pertains to predication X.

These are restrictive relative clauses, I think.
Let us take "John sees the man with a hat on".  If the speaker does not know
which man has a hat on, he could say equivalently "John sees which man
has a hat on".  with regard to the predication, I see them being identical
in meaning - the only difference is the indication of knowledge on the part
of th4e speaker.

I write all this without a great deal of analysis, but was rather stimulated
by discussing this debate with Nora last night,.  Nora will never have time
to read the endless thread, so I did a quick summary for her, and she
came back with " there is no question in an indirect question" - it is to
her misnamed because we use question words in the construction in English.
It seems to her not necessary to follow that practice and use question word
constructions in Lojban, even though it might be permissible.

>> In the forner case, what appears to me an indirect question is not really -
>> it is an English idiom, and there is a non-indirect-question that can
>> substitute.
>
>It's not an English idiom. The semantics is compositional, so it's
>not an idiom,

It is idiomatic, if people use the construction without thinking about its
meaning, and the meaning (even if compositional by some theory) does not
match the average speaker's understanding of what the words mean.  Indirect
questions use question words, but are not really/necessarily questions.

>and it is not peculiarly English, since other
>languages do it too (e.g. Italian _so se_, "I know if", vs. _so che_
>--More--
>"I know that")

Languages may have constructions that make a disticntion, but I have not seen
any sign in American usage that the two are truly distinct in meaning (not
that I have studied the question - this is my "language instinct" talking %^)
Maybe I have poverty of the stimuklus and need to read more of your discourses.
%^)

>It can't mean that a fact is being discussed.
>The meaning of "whether" as complement of "discuss" is indeed
>different from the meaning of "whether" as complement of "know"
>(and most other verbs that can have an interrogative clause
>complement).

OK, Try "say" instead of "discuss".  Presume that the sayer is other than
the speaker and knows the truth value.  Then
John says that x is true. and John says whether x is true. are identical in
predicative meaning.  The only difference is a discursive implicature that the
speaker does not know the truth value in the whether form, and hence cannot
make the distinction between "John says that  x is true" and "John dsays that
x is not true".  But there are other possible implicatures, since the
speaker could also know but not feel it necessary to tell the listener.
But the event being discussed remains the same- John is making a statement
which communicates the truth value of x.

>The difference seems to correlate with whether the
>interrogative clause can alternate with a that-clause. When
>no alternation is possible, as after "discuss" (*"discuss that"),
>the interrogative clause means something approximately like "the
>question about whether".

>At any rate, discussing whether x is
>the case involves enquiring whether x is the case, while
>discussing the fact that x is the case does not.

In my usage, discussing "the fact that" indeed has no question compnent.
But "discussing whether" is ambiguous bettwen the question and non-question
forms.  I can imagine that the type of distinction you make is the sort of
thing that grammar prescriptivists came up with in days when they were listened
to, and  are the sort of things up with which I shall not put.

lojbab
----
lojbab                                                lojbab@access.digex.net
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
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