Re: Q-kau

[Logical Language Group <lojbab>]

la lojbab. cusku di'e

> I believe that it is malglico, or at leats malropno, to label such things
> as "questions", indirect or otherwise.  Let's let Veijo and Ken Shan (or Cowan
> with his Chinese linguist hat on) tell us about indirection in Finnish, 
> Japanese, and Chinese.

Chinese specifically uses the same words for WH-questions and WH-indirect
questions, just like English.  Yes/no questions are asked in one of two
ways, corresponding to "xu" or to "broda gi'i na broda", where the word for
"gi'i" (hai2shi) is usually omitted.  Only the latter form may be used for
an indirect yes/no ("whether") question.  Chinese relative pronouns are
quite distinct from interrogatives.

Some time ago, I polled Linguist List for how it's done in other languages.
The great majority of responses said "WH-indirect questions are the same
as WH-direct."  A minority of languages use relative clauses, and simply
make no distinction between "I know who went to the store" (indirect question)
and "I know the person that went to the store" (relative clause).

-- 
John Cowan		sharing account <lojbab@access.digex.net> for now
		e'osai ko sarji la lojban.