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la nitcion cusku di'e
.i la deil.kuper. djuno ledu'u ma kau catra la lauras.palmer. .i su'o no da zo'u: la deil.kuper. djuno ledu'u da catra la lauras.palmer.
Those two are not equivalent. If Dale Cooper has no clue as to who killed Laura Palmer, the second one is true and the first one is false.
Now, there is an intuitive sense in which {du'u ... kau} has a meaning
distinct from any embedding knower. That sense is that the variable
flagged is instantiated or uninstantiated. But, in this take at least,
instantiation is something that you need a knower around to do. So to me
.i da kau catra la lauras.
is identical to:
.i su'o da zo'u: mi djuno ledu'u da catra la lauras
You insist on relating {kau} to {djuno}, but I don't think
there is any link other than they are frequently used
together. For example:
i na vajni fa le du'u makau catra la lauras
It doesn't matter who killed Laura.
There is no knower required here.
But, you might retort, then {kau} becomes meaningless outside of a
knower and a predicate. Yes, and that's no big problem. In cases like
this, we pull out the lambda salvator. :-) If the only real things are
numbers, "+" doesn't mean anything. It needs two numbers either side of
it to mean something -- a number. So + is \lx\ly.x+y. x means
something; y means something; and x+y means something. But + on its own
doesn't.
The usual understanding is indeed that {kau} becomes meaningless
outside of a subordinate clause, but it is not necessarily related
to any knowers. I have been trying to give it some meaning in
those cases, but it is still very experimental.
Jordan doesn't see what the point of the question is, and why
formalise. The reason is, I have no idea what Jorge means when he uses
{kau}, and that's a problem.
I am sure you understand all my uses of {kau} in subordinate
clauses. I agree that my use in main clauses is non-satndard,
because there is no such use by anybody else. But you did use
it (you used {da kaunai} in fact) precisely in the sense I use
{makau} in a main clause, that's the only reason I brought
it up.
So, how do you say "I know that noone did it?" Let's redo the lot: "I know someone or noone did it" .i mi djuno ledu'u su'o no da zo'u: da zukte
But everybody knows that. You don't need to know anything about the facts of the matter in order to know that, just some logic. The interesting thing is: "I know that someone did it or I know that noone did it", but you can't shove the "or" inside the subclause.
"I know who did it (and it might have been noone)" .i su'o no da zo'u: ganai da zukte gi mi djuno ledu'u da zukte
No, this one is wrong. The lojban is true even if I know nothing about the matter.
"I know noone did it" .i mi djuno ledu'u no da zo'u: da zukte
Yes, that's right.
And if (as I suspect) that means the same as: .i no da zo'u: mi djuno ledu'u da zukte then we're still OK.
But it doesn't. That only means that there is noone such that I know that they did it, not that I know that noone did it.
The other thing is, Jorge quite conversationally said: > 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.)" Not defending it, because he was illustrating something completely different; but as an assumed fact about the language.
Not at all. It was to contrast how I would say what you said
with {da kaunai}. Your usage is as non-standard as mine.
So while I've
been away :-) , {kau} has turned from an indirect question marker to a
focus marker?
CLL gives {mi djuno le du'u la djan kau pu klama le zarci}
= "I know that it was John who went to the store." Make your
own conclusions. I don't approve of that usage though. I don't
think I'm using it (purely?) as a focus marker in my example.
I don't have the energy or the time for another flamefest, and there's
lots of other Lojban stuff to do, and even more non-Lojban stuff. But
this is the kind of thing that I regard as contrary to the intention of
CLL, and I would frown on broadening the sense of {kau} in this way.
Hmm...
Sorry, Jorge, but I do. I would relent if I knew that a significant proportion of other Lojbanists use kau in this broader meaning. And that it is being presented as a fait accompli unnerves me.
I am not presenting it (the use of makau in the main clause) as a fait accompli. Please read again the mail where I mentioned it. The use in subordinate clauses I think is fairly well understood in terms of the set of propositional answers. We tried to do it purely in terms of moving quantifiers around the way you're trying it, but it doesn't really work.
OK, back to you guys. Jorge, when you explain what you've been doing, could you please type very slowly for the jboske-impaired like myself? :-)
{lo'i du'u makau broda} is the set of propositional answers
to {ma broda}, i.e. the members are things like {le du'u la djan broda},
{le du'u la meris broda} and even {le du'u noda zo'u da broda}.
{le du'u makau broda} selects the relevant answer(s) in context.
(True answers in the case of {djuno}, because of the semantics
of djuno, not because of {kau}.)
The controversial bit is what it means to present a bare
{makau broda} not in a subordinate clause. My take is that
this {makau} corresponds to English "whatever":
le tanxe cu se skari makau
The box is whatever colour it is.
Whatever the answer is, I'm not making it explicit (probably
because it is irrelevant). It is sort of a tautological claim.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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