Chinese-type Questions in Lojban

[John Cowan <cbmvax!snark.thyrsus.com!cowan>]

This is a fragment of a future paper explaining how to ask questions in
Lojban.

There are two basic kinds of questions in Lojban: fill-in-the-blank
questions and truth questions.  A fill-in-the-blank question uses one of
various question words; the word is placed where the answer is meant to go.
For example:

	la lojban mo.
	Lojban is-what?

asks for a selbri to replace the cmavo "mo", and

	ti mapku ma
	this is-a-hat-of what?

asks for a sumti to replace the cmavo "ma".
There are also question cmavo for tenses/modals ("cu'e"), place tags ("fi'a"),
and attitudinals ("pei").  In addition, each of the five kinds of logical
connectives has a question word.

Until now, I had always assumed that the logical-connective questions had
no equivalents in natural languages -- which is always a dangerous assumption:
for each grammatical feature, some language somewhere does it Lojbanically!
It turns out that a common kind of question in Chinese exactly matches the
logical-connective question, except that Chinese has no explicit cmavo.

The question

	ni3 qu4 bu qu4
	you go not go

means "Are you going?/Will you go?"  It is a neutral question, with none of
the impatience of English "Are you going or not?"

Well, in Lojban we can say:

	do klama gi'i na klama
	you go [connective ?] not go

which literally asks "Which logical connective, inserted between the
propositions 'You go' and 'You don't go', makes the resultant proposition true?"
Acceptable answers are:

	nagi'e
	Not 1st but 2nd.
	I go.

	gi'enai
	1st but not second.
	I don't go.

	gi'onai
	1st or 2nd but not both
	Maybe yes, maybe no.

In each case, the answerer supplies the appropriate logical connection
cmavo.  In Chinese, these questions are limited to verbs; in Lojban, both
selbri and sumti (and other constructions as well) can make use of the
construction:

	do djica loi tcati ji loi ckafi
	you desire part-of-the-mass-of coffee [conn. ?] part-of-the-mass-of tea
	Do you want coffee or tea?

with corresponding answers "na.e", ".enai", and "onai".  Other possible answers
are:

	.e
	Both 1 and 2.
	Both.

	joi
	Mass-mixed-and.
	Both mixed together.

oicairo'o

--
cowan@snark.thyrsus.com		...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan
		e'osai ko sarji la lojban