Re: kau and jai issues

[jorge@phyast.pitt.edu]

I have most of the Lojban text that appeared in Lojban list separately from 
everything else. (I include chatting in Lojban, but exclude examples inside
English text.)

In those files I used kau 43 times, Nick used it 29 times and John only once.
The ones you got mostly come from examples in English discussion rather than 
actual text.

The first quote you have for kau from John, in file cow94302.txt was actually
written by me in response to a post by Colin, so that may explain why
I'm so underrepresented :)

Also, my numbers are a bit inflated because the chatting usually includes 
quotes so the same thing sometimes gets counted more than once.

I won't analyze my uses because I know they were all as indirect questions.
John's use was in:

>        le du'u ri du la tcuan,dz. noi senva le du'u ri toldi kei jikau

and then a lot of discussion about it (with Nick, it would seem). That's
an indirect question. [Nice use of senva le _du'u_... BTW  :) ]

> mamta_mi.doc: .i cumki ka le nu zvati makauli'u
> mamta_mi.doc: .i lu xu do djuno le du'u makau me mi li'u se cusku ko'a le cifnu

These two I don't seem to have. The second one is an indirect question. The
first one I've no idea what it means. If it means "it is possible depending
on where you are", then it is an indirect question as well.

Now, Nick's usage is another matter. I think that {kau}'s old meaning was
something like "known!", and Nick seems to have used a lot of {kaunai}s
to mean "unknown!". I don't think this would be compatible with the indirect
question meaning, so I wouldn't include it in the definition of kau.

Eliminating obvious indirect question uses, and all {kaunai}s, we are left with:


> badbarda.rev: cmesanji lei relcalku danlu .i gu ra se cmene dakau gi ri 
> co'a bikla ganlo

I don't find this one in my files, and I don't understand what it means.


> nnall993.txt: cusku ledu'u lekau xerselfi'i ka'e vimcu leko'e nunfe'u tu'u

Here I would have used {le mokau xerselfi'i}, but it is still an indirect question.


> norwind.txt: lejei fi'akau ri fi'akau ra vlimau

Probably should be du'u instead of jei, but still an indirect question.


> nsn92131.txt: di'uji'a puza se cusku mi .ikau .i'a mi se jdadapma

This was supposed to mean "known". I don't think it has anything to do with kau.


In conclusion, unless you want to go back to the previous confusion of
identifying "kau" with "known", which came about because all the indirect
question examples were given with {djuno}, I can't find any use of {kau}
that is not an indirect question. The only exception to this is: {.i gu ra se 
cmene dakau gi ri co'a bikla ganlo}, which I don't understand what it means.

I deal with {jai} in another post.

Jorge