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On Wed, Apr 30, 2003 at 08:53:55AM -0400, John Cowan wrote:
> And Rosta scripsit:
>
> > Someone someday is going the face up to the fact that de facto
> > grammar of {kau} is that it can follow any question word, but
> > not meaningfully anything else, and write a grammar accordingly,
> > using whatever formalism best gets the job done.
>
> Well, "someone someday" turned out to be "me today".
>
> Despite Lojbab's strictures, I decided to confine the new selma'o
> KAU to appear after only those selma'o that actually have question
> words in them: viz. CUhE FA GA JA GIhA GUhA A UI KOhA GOhA CAI PA.
> In a nutshell, it works fine. I have attached the necessary context
> diff against grammar.300. In each case, KAU is bound tightly to the
> preceding cmavo: you can't say "sejinaikau" or even "sejikaunai", it
> has to be "jikau". You can, however, say "xokauroi" and "xokaumoi".
> And of course it's grammatical to use "kau" after a non-question cmavo
> that belongs to one of the above selma'o.
>
> This is a probe of jboskeists: do you think it's worth writing up a
> proposal for the byfy, or should we just leave bad enough alone? I am
> a little paranoid about possible trouble because KAU is used in both the
> main grammar and the preparser grammar, which has been known to lead to
> trouble in the past.
As some people were pointing out on the other list, kau needs to
be allowed after any sumti, not just KOhA.
CLL specifically condones the usage:
mi djuno ledu'u la djan. kau klama la zarci
for
"I know that it was john who went to the store."
Other than that I think this would probably be a good idea. Lojbab's
objection that other selma'o might get question words eventually
is a decent one, but perhaps the proper answer is that if/when they
do KAU should only then be allowed after it.
--
Jordan DeLong - fracture@hidden.email
lu zo'o loi censa bakni cu terzba le zaltapla poi xagrai li'u
sei la mark. tuen. cusku
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