Re: ni, jei, perfectionism

[John Cowan <cowan@locke.ccil.org>]

la .and. cusku di'e

> BTW, use of subordinate interrogatives is cross-linguistically
> pretty widespread. Which would follow, if, as I contend,
> main clause interrogatives are semantically a subtype of the
> subordinate variety.

Indeed.  I did an enquiry on Linguist List once to find out about this,
specifically with regard to Y/N indirect questions.  IIRC, only
Turkish was anomalous, using Chinese-style "V-not-V"
questions in indirect form, but not in direct form.  In addition,
some languages simply do not distinguish between "knows whether"
and "knows that" nuances.
 
> Is the English text of Saki available online? I'd be willing to
> take a look.

It is at http://www.iptweb.com/www/lib/openwin.html .  A hasty
glance shows five indirect questions: three "whether"s, a "why",
and a "who".  The Athelstan translation shows pretty uniformly
"le nu" in circumstances that would call for "le du'u" today.

One case is particularly telling:

	se lakne lenu do kucli lenu mu'i ma mi'a rinka lenu leva
	canko cu ranji le kalri kei le mela aktobr. lecysoltei

representing the original

	You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an
	October afternoon.

It is clear that Athelstan, not having either "kau" or "du'u"
available, simply used "lenu mu'i ma" to render the English word "why"
without regard to the lack of a direct question here.  Merely
changing the second "nu" to "du'u" and "ma" to "ma kau" (as well
as "mi'a" to "tu'a mi'a" or "rinka" to "gasnu" to avoid the
sumti raising) would make this sentence good 1997 Lojban.

> > knowledge of the value of the sumti, or desire to notexpress it at
>                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > I am curious as to how non-SAE languages deal with these things.
>                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > tell us how many
>           ^^^^^^^^

I grant that your first example can be *derived* from an underlying
indirect question, but to actually *call* it an indirect question
strikes me as over the top.

-- 
John Cowan	http://www.ccil.org/~cowan		cowan@ccil.org
			e'osai ko sarji la lojban