Re: xor questions (was Re: indirect Qs (was Re: On logji lo

["Jorge J. Llambías" <jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR>]

>Feel free to quote Book at me, but so far as I am concerned
>lu'a lu'i = lu'a.  You do not need to convert first one way and then the
other.

Well, feel free to quote Book at me as well, but so far as I am
concerned they're not the same. For example: {lu'a lu'i ci girzu}
is "a member of a set of three groups", i.e., one of the three groups,
whereas {lu'a ci girzu} is "a member of three groups", not one of the
three groups but a common member of the three.

 >>You must mean {ro lu'a lu'i lo tcati onai lo ckafi}, but that's not what
And
>>meant by "each of {tea xor coffee}".
>
>The outer quantifier ofa lu'a indicates selection, so ro means all/each of
>the set.  That set consists of either tea or coffee, but not both.  I am
>suugesting that such a set has only one member, and I am asking
>you to tell me  which one.

I agree with your understanding of {ro lu'a lu'i lo tcati onai lo ckafi}.
Go back to And's post and you will see that that is not what he wants.

>I did not give the full sentence (being short of time and thought,
>but wanting to get the idea of using lu'a out there).

Well, as long as you don't give the full sentence I'm not convinced
that there is a succint way of asking that question.

> On way might be
>vasru ma po'u lu'a lo tcati onai lo ckafi

{lo glare} is a true answer for that (assuming you add {lu'i}). And's
original formula was enough if we are not concerned with asking
exactly what we want to ask.

>There are probably a variety of other formulas that would work.  I am
>claiming the exclusive or (or maybe I need no'u to do so) and also asking
>what the contents are.

Yes, but you're not asking that the answer be either {lo tcati}
or {lo ckafi}. There are many other answers that could describe
the contents without telling you whether they're tea or coffee.

 >>But this is just like And's original form. {lo glare} or
>>{lo selpinxe} work as unhelpful answers to that question.
>
>if the issue is how to force someone who wants to be unhelpful into being
>helpful, then Lojban will not necessarily do so succintly.

Rather, the issue is how to formulate exactly the question
we want to ask. That doesn't mean that such precise formulation
will be needed to get the meaning across.

> I would still
>try something like
>
>ma no'u pa lu'a lo tcati ce lo ckafi lu'u noi ke'apo'o cu selvasru
>(I haven't checked the grammar on this for scope of the relative clause).

{lo glare} is a valid true answer.

co'o mi'e xorxes