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la and cusku di'e
> i mi nitcu lo'e tanxe "I need a box." > i ma skari ty "Of what colour?" > i makau skari "Of any colour." "(Of whatever colour.)" > > And had some valid objections to this, but I can't remember > them now I can't remember either. But how about "She knows he needs a box of any colour"?
Yes, that was the objection!
{ko'a djuno le du'u ko'e nitcu lo'e tanxe poi makau skari ke'a}
could end up being ambiguous between
(1) She knows he needs a box of any colour.
and
(2) She knows what colour of box he needs.
I think it means (2), so how do we say (1)?
We can paraphrase (2) as: "Whatever colour the box he needs is,
she knows that he needs a box of that colour." That suggests that
the "whatever" reading might be correct when makau is an argument
of the main bridi. That might be attributed to {ma}, which we know
always has sentence scope. Then to restrict the scope to the
subordinate bridi we might use {da}:
ko'a djuno le du'u ko'e nitcu lo'e tanxe poi dakau skari ke'a
She knows that he needs a box of any colour.
Notice that then we have a difference between:
(3) ko'e nitcu lo tanxe poi dakau skari ke'a
He needs a box of any colour.
and:
(4) ko'e nitcu lo tanxe poi makau skari ke'a
He needs a box of whatever colour.
In (4) there is some colour such that he needs a box of that
colour, but I'm not saying which colour it is because it may
not be relevant (I may not know which colour it is, either).
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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