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Re: [ceqli] What

In a message dated 8/18/2007 8:33:40 AM Central Daylight Time, rmay@hidden.email writes:


We say
zi ten kwa
or
kwa zi ten
for "What do you have?'
How are we to say "I don't know what you have."?
go bu jan kwa zi ten.
Somehow seems too easy.  How does Loglan/Lojban do it?


That's a good question.
Lojban has a special cmavo for that:  kau.  It follows the interrogative to make a relative pronoun.  It's not without some controversy.
Klingon has a set of interrogatives and another set of relative pronouns.  The two don't overlap very well.
Esperanto does what English does - use relative pronouns that look the same as interrogatives.
Latejami has a complete solution using inverse nouns: see section 18.4 in "Lexical Semantics".
http://www.eskimo.com/~ram/lexical_semantics.html

"It's also possible to use derivations of the case tags directly, without a relative conjunction. In order to do this, however, we must invert the case tag, convert it to a noun, and then open up its argument structure. For example, the P/F-s locative case tag "zog" can be paraphrased as 'being at/in'. Thus, the open F/P-s inverse noun form "zogangaw" means simply 'the location where'. In other words, the argument of the open noun (i.e. the embedded sentence or the patient of the embedded sentence) will be the patient of the inverted locative:
   She showed me WHERE the boys bought the magazine.
   = She showed me ZOGANGAW the boys bought the magazine.
   [Literally, this can be glossed as 'She showed me the location
   where the boys bought the magazine'.]
Let's do the same for the other examples that used case tags:
   He told me WHO/WHAT he bought it FOR.
   = He told me TOMUMANGAW he bought it.
   [In English, this can be closely rendered as 'He told me the
   beneficiary for which he bought it'.]

   You told me WHY you sold it.
   = You told me TOMAMANGAW you sold it.
   [This sentence can be glossed as 'You told me the reason for
   your selling it'.]

   Bill told me HOW he did it.
   = Bill told me BUSEGANGAW he did it.
   [This sentence can be glossed as 'Bill told me the method of his
   doing it'.]

   I don't like THE WAY you behaved yesterday.
   = I don't like ZUNXUMEGANGAW you behaved yesterday.
   [This sentence can be glossed as 'I don't like the manner in
   which you behaved yesterday'.]
The astute reader may now be wondering why there is any need at all for a relative conjunction, since we can use an appropriate open adjective in its place. Here is an example:
   I saw the building that he was walking to.
   = I saw the building ximyu he was walking zogumbe IT.
           OR
   = I saw the building ZOGUMBANGYU he was walking.
   [Literally, 'I saw the building to which he was walking.]
In other words, we can take advantage of the perfect symmetry inherent in the way we are designing case tags. If a case tag can link an argument of a main verb or the entire clause to its own argument, the inverse form can perform the exact reverse operation. This is exactly what we did in the last example. Thus, the inverse open adjective form can be paraphrased as 'X-which', where "X" is a case tag. Here's another example:
   There's the girl that he bought the flowers for.
   = There's the girl ximyu he bought the flowers tomume HER.
           OR
   = There's the girl TOMUMANGYU he bought the flowers.
Here, "tomumangyu" is exactly equivalent to English "for whom".
However, the above approach cannot be used with the special case tags "tomese" (passive), "tomose" (anti-passive), "tomeve" (co-subject), and "tomove" (non-subject), because they simply provide an oblique version of a primary argument of their head and do not have real argument structures. "

stevo