Re: Loaded Questions (Was: Re: Conlangcon Boston today!)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Roger Mills" <romilly@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Tuesday, November 12, 2002 12:16 AM
Subject: Re: Loaded Questions (Was: Re: Conlangcon Boston today!)


> H.S.Teoh wrote:
> >Ahh, typical case of confusion about English loaded questions. I used
> >to have a Classical Greek prof who could never figure out which way a
> >question was loaded in English, i.e., is it
> >        "you don't ... do you?" --> expecting "no"
> >and
> >        "you do ... don't you?" --> expecting "yes
> >or is it the other way round?
>
>
> You've got it right way round.  Kash eliminates the problem by simply
using
> the same word in both cases-- yale 'it is, there is' with question/rising
> intonation; the main clause has normal/falling intonation:
            I also wanted to resolve ambiguities somewhat like this during
construction. Instead of having a word like "maybe" or "possibly", I limited
it to two words with nothing in between: "anche" and "kndeh", which are
equivalent to something like "yes, possibly" and "possibly not", although
not as concrete as "probably" and "probably not". i.e.:

            A: "Kwanhejemm qlute qa." (Will you have the clothes?)
            B: "Anche da." (Possibly so.)

             In any case, there is no easy way for A to draw a total blank,
unless B simply says "godiwache", which is a blanket term for any undefined
quality, which may be sort of like responding with "whatever" among some
English speakers.