Re: TECH: Higley on "kau"

[C.J.Fine@BRADFORD.AC.UK]

Nick's response to Greg:
>
> Quoth Greg Higley:
> >    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.
>

As I have said in a comment on somebody's cafe text, I don't believe that
"se'i" works like that at all. As things stand at present, all discursives,
like all attitudinals (other than "pei") strictly refer to the speaker's
intentions/quality of knowledge/attitude. I have on occasion wanted a way to
indicate somebody else's attitude etc., but I'm not convinced that it is
desirable. ("se'i" is about whether the speaker's attitude relates to vo'a,
not about whose attitude it is).

> >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.
>

I did not think this was the case, and started writing a diatribe against it;
but on reflection, I think that is a good distinction.
However, if this is the case, then "kau" does not, as I thought, remove the
'performative' quality of Q-words (ma etc) - then various texts of mine, and
I think others, are wrong.
	mi djuno le du'u le cukta cu zvati makau
is still asking a question of the hearer, which was not my previous
understanding of it.

 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.
>
And asking!

	Colin