Re: TECH: Higley on "kau"

[Nick Nicholas <nsn@MULLIAN.EE.MU.OZ.AU>]

Quoth Greg Highley:
>    As I understand it, the cmavo "kau" indicates that the value of
>that which it "modifies" is known, presumably to the speaker, but
>there are instances where this is apparently not the case.  []
>How do we
>know to whom the referent is known?  Is kau somehow connected to the
>x1 sumti of djuno and any other related gismu?  For if I say la djos
>djuno le du'u pakau le prenu pu dzuli'u le loldi, apparently it is to
>John (and not to me?) that the referent of pakau le prenu is known.
>If kau does not always indicate that it is the speaker who knows the
>referent, what is the standard for determining this?  For la djos
>djuno le du'u pakau le prenu pu dzuli'u le loldi could mean "John
>knows that one of the people walked on the floor, and I know which
>one."  But this seems contrary to intuition.  What is the standard?
>Is there one?

An outstanding question. I have held that the knower of {kau} is the
knower of the bridi it is in, implicit or not. "John knows which one."
I also wished that extended to observative atitudinals such as {za'a},
which gave rise to reaction from Fairfax. This issue is unresolved,
but I agree with you on the above solution being counterintuitive.
{se'i}/{se'inai} exist as (kludgy) patchwork disambiguators at the
moment. But no consensus on default interpretation was reached.

>I think it would be useful and advantageous to split the use of kau as
>it is used with indefinites and interrogatives.  With interrogatives,
>kau could be used to ask a question, while indicating that the speaker
>already knows the answer.  Thus a teacher could ask her students, mi
>makau zukte makau "What am I doing and to what end?" and her students
>would realize that she wasn't just asking this for her (mental)
>health.   With indefinites on the other hand (and I class such things
>as pa le prenu among them), kau would perform its simple duty of
>letting us know that the referent is known.  mi zo'ekau zukte zo'ekau
>means something like "I'm doing something-known-to-me for some
>purpose-known-to-me."  And thus mi djuno le du'u do du zo'ekau "I know
>that you are someone-known-to-me."/"I know who you are." becomes easy.

I hope this distinction, which is pretty elegant and clear, wasn't passed
over in the spec of {kau} (although I remember at the time that I felt
I understood {kau} better than Lojban Central :) . But yes, that's correct.

Btw, as John Cowan will no doubt point out, {kau} is not restricted to
knowing/djuno, but can extend to all sorts of analogous concepts like
believing, opining etc.

>1By the way, what is the indefinite cmavo corresponding to mo, which I
>believe was mentioned in that very same article on kau.  I know it's a
>CV'V beginning with c.

co'e

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Nick S. Nicholas,		       "Rode like foam on the river of pity
Depts. of CompSci & ElecEng,  	        Turned its tide to strength
University of Melbourne, Australia.     Healed the hole that ripped in living"
nsn@{munagin.ee|mundil.cs}.mu.oz.au           - Suzanne Vega, Book Of Dreams
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