Re: replies re. ka & mamta be ma

[ucleaar <ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk>]

Jorge:
> > I am now become dubious about the utility of Q-kau. {Makau} can
> > notionally be replaced by {da}, thus:
> >   koha djuno le duhu makau klama
> >   koha djuno le duhu (da zohu) da klama
> No, it may be that she knows that noone is coming.

I mean that {da} (or {no da}) could be a replacement for {makau}
that makes the bridi true.

> > That is, to claim {koha djuno le duhu makau klama} is merely
> > to claim "She knows whether there is someone that came". It
> > seems the same as {koha djuno le duhu xukau da klama}.
> Perhaps, but {ko'a djuno le du'u makau klama} strongly suggests
> (without reaching the point of claiming) that she knows a useful
> answer to the question, just as {ma klama} pragmatically asks for
> a useful answer, even though in principle anything that makes
> the sentence true is acceptable. (What is useful and how useful
> it is depends, of course, on context.)

I'll go along with this. Two interesting things have emerged from
our discussion of Q-kau: (1) there are alternative locutions of form
{da zohu ... le duhu ... da}; (2) the truth-conditional meaning
of Q-kau is not what we (or at least I) had originally thought
it to be.

---
And