Re: jei

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

Lojbab:
> >> But mi djuno fi lejei broda DOES mean "I know whether broda" more or less.
> >> It means I know something about the truth value of the predication broda,
> >> which to me means "I know whether broda".
> >
> >"I know whether broda" is "I know what the truth value of broda is [i.e.
> >0, 1 or maybe some value in between]". You can know something about
> >thr truth value without knowing whether it is 0 or 1: e.g. you may
> >know that I'm trying to discover what the truth value of broda is,
> >so you therefore know something about the truth value of broda.
> Yes, but ellipsis presumes cooperastive listener and speaker.  I would
> undoubtedly phrase the sentece differently to say something like that
> (or have context that clearly indicates it).  I guess I could also make
> it clear with lekau jei broda , which to me seems more obvious than ledu'u
> xukau - which seems very malglico for some reason to me (or malrarna) when
> jei is explicitly available.  xu just too strongly asks a question to me,
> even if metalinguistically marked.

Similarly "Mi djuno fi le mamta be do" could, presuming cooperating
interlocuotrs, mean "I know who is your mother". But that is a rather
vague way of going about it. Much less vague is "Mi djuno fi/fe? lo
duhu makau mamta do". Similarly, "xukau" is less vague than "jei".

"Jei" is really an unwarranted shorthand for "x1 [a number] is truth
value [jitfa zei jetnu] fe lo duhu broda".
In this case, "I know something about thetruth value of broda" would
be "Mi djuno fi lo jifyjetnu be lo duhu broda", while "I know whether
broda" could be rendered "Mi djuno fi?/fe? lo duhu makau jifyjetnu be
lo duhu broda".
This is a bit of a mouthful, but I'd rather see a gadri version of
"makau" used to abbreviate this, as in "Mi djuno fe/fi [makau [jifyjetnu
be lo duhu broda]]".

----
And