18.12. Number questions

The following cmavo is discussed in this section:

number question

The cmavo xo, a member of selma'o PA, is used to ask questions whose answers are numbers. Like most Lojban question words, it fills the blank where the answer should go. (See Section 19.5 for more on Lojban questions.)

Example 18.95.

li	re	su'i	re	du	li	xo
The-number	2	plus	2	equals	the-number	what?

What is 2 + 2?

Example 18.96.

le	xomoi	prenu	cu	darxi	do
The	what-number-th	person		hit	you?

Which person [as in a police lineup] hit you?

xo can also be combined with other digits to ask questions whose answers are already partly specified. This ability could be very useful in writing tests of elementary arithmetical knowledge:

Example 18.97.

li	remu	pi'i	xa	du	li	paxono
The-number	25	times	6	equals	the-number	1?0

to which the correct reply would be mu, or 5. The ability to utter bare numbers as grammatical Lojban sentences is primarily intended for giving answers to xo questions. (Another use, obviously, is for counting off physical objects one by one.)