Re: Relatives, interrogatives and other such particles

staving Jim Henry:

>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?

Pete

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