User:Laqme/éru

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

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

Example: scope

Sometimes rú doesn't expand out far enough:

Bu shoe nháo, ꝡä fa jí rú súq ní râo báq loachaq 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 rú expands into the ꝡä scope.

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

Jí rú súq nä bu shoe nháo, ꝡä fa hóa ní râo báq loachaq da.
For both me and you, they don't allow fúy to come here on Sundays.

But this sentence requires some planning and acrobatics.

Example: questions

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

😬 Tú mea mí Merı róı mí Jeıne nä tua dua súq jí, ꝡä geo hóa nhê hí ba
For each one among Mary and Jane: may you tell me how old she is.

It side-steps around the issue with a rú+móq 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.

éru

If we had a version of X rú 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:

Bu shoe nháo, ꝡä fa jí éru súq ní râo báq loachaq da.
They don't permit that me and you come here on Sundays.
(I'm not allowed and you're not allowed.)

Geone hí mí Merı éru mí Jeıne móq?
How old are Mary and Jane?
(How old is Mary, and how old is Jane?)

éra, éro…?

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

If erV connects illocution acts, then éra…da would mean “I hereby assert this OR I hereby assert that, or I assert both facts”. Or, éro…móq 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.