Re: whether (was Re: ni, jei, perfectionism)

[And Rosta <a.rosta@UCLAN.AC.UK>]

Jorge:
>  >>         la djan frica la alis le ka ce'u klama makau
> >>         "John differs from Alice in where they are going."
>  >
> >The latter means: "the place where Alice is going is not the
> >place where John is going".
>
> It means that assuming that they both go somewhere.

OK. Change to:

    "the set of places where Alice is going is not the set of
     places where John is going"

> > No indirect question there.
>
> But then there would be no indirect question in {mi djuno le du'u
> la djan klama makau}, which can also be rephrased, as you
> have shown.

What I meant is that indirect questions with djuno & other
epistemic predicates translate into a certain type of logical
meaning, characterized by stuff like a universal quantifier
with wide-scope over the epistemic element, and stuff about
knowing that x is truth value of y, and so on. None of that
apparatus is needed for {frica}..

> Let me change the example:
>
>         la djan dunli la alis le ka xukau ce'u glico
>         "John is equal to Alice in whether they are English."

This can be rephrased a la frica:

   le jei la djan glico cu dunli le jei la alis glico

-- again, none of the elaborate logical machinery you get with
djuno & co.

> This one can be explained exactly like {djuno}:
>
>         la djan dunli la alis le ka ce'u glico
>         ija la djan dunli la alis le ka ce'u na glico
>         "Either John equals Alice in that they're both English
>         or John equals Alice in that they're both not English."

In what way is this like {djuno}? Rather, it seems to me like
frica (as I wd have expected).

> >What you are doing with {djuno} is licit, but doesn't advance
> >us towards a logical understanding of {makau}. To argue that
> >these Q-kau are the same, you'd need to show it by translating
> >it into something we understand, such as logical form.
>
> Well, I did it for {dunli}. For {frica} or {zmadu} it is more difficult
> because we need to evaluate the indirect question with two different
> answers. Let me try:
>
>             ti ta frica le ka xukau ce'u blanu
>             This one is different from that one in whether they're blue.
>
> That could be re-expressed as
>
>             ti gonai ta blanu
>             Either this xor that is blue.
>
> but I'm not sure if that really serves as an explication of the
> indirect question. Certainly not if we go beyond binary logic.
> How do you translate this one into logical form:
>
>         mi do toltugni le du'u xukau ta blanu
>         I disagree with you on whether that is blue.
>
> Is it an indirect question? It seems to have something in
> common with {frica}, in that there are two different evaluations
> of the question.

   For every x, a truthvalue of le du`u ta blanu, it is not the case
   that we agree (= each of us believes/claims) that x is tv of
   le du`u ta blanu.

--And