[YG Conlang Archives] > [jbosnu group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
On Mon, May 14, 2001 at 03:25:00AM +0000, Jorge Llambias wrote: > > la camgusmis cusku di'e > > >Nothing's wrong with the straightforward way, but the point of indirect > >questions is to produce a sentence structure in which a question is > >embedded, and the english translation of 8.8 in the book had no such > >structure. > > But it does! The embedded question is precisely "Is John or George > at the park?" Just as in Lojban. But the translation of 8.8 does not contain that sentence. An indirect question must contain the _literal_words_ of a question. > >Whether you consider this pointful or not is a different issue, but I > >like them in lojban for subtlety and emphasis, because you can put > >kau after anything, thus effectively answering your own question in a > >nice little sarcastic touch. > > {paunai} is useful for rhetorical questions. Indirect questions > are not the same thing. True, but they can be used similarily. The difference is one of emphasis, IMO. -Robin -- http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ BTW, I'm male, honest. le datni cu djica le nu zifre .iku'i .oi le so'e datni cu to'e te pilno je xlali -- RLP http://www.lojban.org/