Dear Nina and Johnny,

thank you.

Nina, your interpretation of the words is possible, but with limited
knowledge, I am not able to discuss further.

At least, we agree it is a question. We may have asked ourselves
questions before, e.g. "What is one plus one?".

It can be a rhetoric question, as Nina explained, a question of which
the answer is known.

I welcome any insights into this, but let's keep speculations to the
minimum.

metta,
Yong Peng.

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, johnny pruitt wrote:

Well first off I dont know if a rhetorical particle actually exists; I
just made the term up. But I guess I just mean some kind of a particle
that signifies that the sentence is a question that does not contain
the word "what". For instance, "are you a buddhist?" or "are you going
to the store?". However and added stipulation would be that the
question is a retorical question which more often than not would
contain a negative like "Are you not a buddhist". So maybe "ki.m"
would not in this instance mean "what" but just be a particle that
begs the question. Or maybe the "ki.m" phrase is a shortened idiomatic
form of a common expression which in full could have ben rendered
"what(ki.m) is their, therfore(ta.m), which(ya) I should have for
believing that ..........

> can you explain what you mean by a "rhetorical particle"?
>
>> Could we focus on the phrase "and what (is) that which I
>> myself". Does the word "ta.m" mean "therefore"? Possibly the
>> the "ki.m" is just used as a retorical particle indicating the
>> desire to make someone think about the following dialouge.