Re: jei

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

Jorge:
> > we only have lojei
> > short for "loduhu xukau".
> {lojei} is not short for {lodu'u xukau}. {tu'a lojei} is "short" for that,
> and it is shorter only because jei has one syllable while du'u has two,
> not because the expresion itself is any more compact.

Good point. "Mi djuno lo jei" is "there is a truth value that I know",
not "I know what the truth value is". Even more reason for the severely
limited utility of jei.

> > I think what I'd actually like to see is an
> > intrrogative sumti, "xahu", so we can get "mi djuno xahu mamta do" (I
> > know who is your mother).
>
> But what grammar would it have? There is no current selmaho that would
> allow you that form, I think.

If "mi djuno xahu mamta be do", xahu could behave like "lohe", "lehe"
syntactically.

> And that would only work for makau, what
> would you do with mokau, xokau, xukau, jikau, etc?

Leave them as they are, along with makau. Of these, makau and xukau
are the most frequent; I would like to see a briefer version of loduhu
xukau as well, but can't see how to do it.

> > This wouldn't handle all uses of Q-kau, by any means, but it would
> > often afford considerable brevity. Maybe someone more ingenious can think
> > of a more general abbreviatory device, but at any rate such would be
> > welcome.
>
> Why do you need to abbreviate? {mi djuno le du'u makau mamta do} is not
> unbearably long, just three more syllables than what you propose (which
> doesn't really work as it is). And if the du'u phrase is longer, the two
> extra syllables just become irrelevant.

It's 3 extra syllables and one or two extra degrees of syntactic
subordination, which is also some measure of complexity - i.e
. [djuno [lo [duhu [broda [makau]]]]] vs. [djuno [xahu [broda]]].
And of course if terminators are required the complexity leads to
more syllables.

---
And