Re: Relatives, interrogatives and other such particles

Peter Bleackley wrote:
>
> >I'm considering an approach for my new language where the
> >indefinite particle acts as an interrogative in question sentences.
> >A yes/no question just has "ftu" before the verb; a more
> >specific WH-question has "ftu" before the verb and "shti" after the
> >questioned element.  In non-question sentences, "shti" means
> >"some, any".  This makes it tricky to ask things like
> >"Do you have any cats?" -- the most straightforward way would
> >be ambiguous with "Which cats do you have?"  This is
> >probably too confusing and I may well drop it.  Or maybe there
> >is an alternate word for "some/any" that is used only in
> >questions...?  Or a circumlocution like "one or more"?
>
> How about,
>
> when shti is used as "some, any" in an interogative sentence, it is
> reduplicated, eg
>
> ftu have cat shti? Which cat do you have?
> ftu have cat shtishti? Do you have any cats?
>
> shtishti might then be phonologically reduced in some mannner, eg
> ftu have cat shtiss?
>
Now that I think of it, another way would be to differentiate the two uses
with stress-- "which" sense is stressed, "any" sense unstressed ("cat" would
be stressed in that case).

In a declarative sentence, the "any" sense would be default, of course,
since "which" wouldn't make sense-- "I don't have any cats"

A problem might arise in the situation where one is expressing surprise--
"Do you have _any_ cheese(cats/money, etc)?"-- that might call for the
reduplicated form.

The some/any distinction has yet to be worked out satisfactorily in
Kash.....

On the general question, it's possible that Malay/Indonesian fits here,
though with difficulty--

apa 'what?' -- apa-apa 'something', apa-apa saja 'anything at all' (apa is
also the marker for yes-no questions)

siapa 'who?' -- siapa saja 'anyone' (saja means 'just, only'); and the
legalistic _barang siapa_ 'whoever'

mana 'which' has no such uses, AFAIK-- but it's odd that it's the formant in
directionals kemana 'to where?', dimana 'at where?', darimana 'from where?'