User:Laqme/éru

This page lists some motivating examples for the word eru in Toadua:

eru: connective: 'X and Y' but bubbles up to illocution-phrase level rather than clause scope

Example: scope

Sometimes ru doesn't expand out far enough:

Bủ shỏe nháo fâ jí ru súq ní rào baq lỏachaq da.
They don't permit that me and you come here on Sundays.

Maybe we wanted this sentence to mean: “I'm not allowed, and you're not allowed”. But as-is it only says that us both going here on Sundays is disallowed, because ru expands into the scope.

Prenex-rephrasing of such a sentence can be clunky. We might try:

Jí ru súq bı, bủ shỏe nháo fâ fúy ní rào baq lỏachaq da.
For both me and you, they don't allow fúy to come here on Sundays.

Ack, that doesn't work, fúy gets overwritten by nháo on the way. OK, we can say this:

Lủ bủ shỏe nháo fâ hóa ní rào baq lỏachaq ky jí ru súq da.
Such that they don't permit hóa to come here on Sundays, are both me and you.

But this sentence requires some planning and acrobatics.

Example: questions

Check out this translation of "How old are Mary and Jane?" in the spreadsheet:

😬 Tushı mẻa mí Mẻrı roı mí Jẻıny bı tủa dủa súq jí gêo zé nhè hı ba
For each one among Mary and Jane: may you tell me how old she is.

It side-steps around the issue with a ru+moq translation: we don't want to ask which age it is that both Mary and Jane have.

In the process, it has become a command/wish instead of a question. It's also 17 words long and sounds like you're a robot alien.

eru

If we had a version of X ru Y that bubbles up to the illocution phrase and makes two illocution acts, one for “the sentence if we had said X” and one for “the sentence if we had said Y”, we could use it to solve these different-looking problems:

Bủ shỏe nháo fâ jí eru súq ní rào baq lỏachaq da.
They don't permit that me and you come here on Sundays.
(I'm not allowed and you're not allowed.)

Gẻone hı mí Mẻrı eru mí Jẻıny moq?
How old are Mary and Jane?
(How old is Mary, and how old is Jane?)

era, ero…?

I don't think these are as useful (which is why I deleted eaı).

If erV connects illocution acts, then era…da would mean “I hereby assert this OR I hereby assert that, or I assert both facts”. Or, ero…moq would mean “I hereby ask this, XOR I hereby ask that”.

That's pretty uncooperative of me: which is it that I'm asserting or asking? Like, do I expect the listener to guess?

It doesn't seem to make much sense to connect our own illocutionary acts with any other logical connectives.