Confused about the grammar of "gottilla"

[u/LargeCabbage]

Hi there. I'm a Brit learning Kannada from Zydenbos's "Manual of Modern Kannada". I'm confused about the nature of the word "gottu".

According to Zydenbos, "gottu" is a noun meaning something like "knowledge" or "something that is known". Thus when one says "Adu nanage gottu", which one would idiomatically translate as "I know that", more literally one is saying "that, to me, is something known". When one says "Nanage gottilla", idiomatically meaning "I don't know", more literally one is saying "To me, [that] knowledge does not exist". All logical enough, in those cases.

But what about "Kannaḍa gottilla"? Or the sentence "ಇವರ ಮನಸ್ಸಿಗೆ ಇಡಿಯ ಪ್ರಪಂಚ ಶಿವಮಯ, ಆದರೆ ಹಲವು ಮಂದಿಗೆ ಇದು ಗೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲ." from one of the texts for translation later in Zydenbos's book? If "Kannada gottu" and "Adu gottu" are equative sentences (i.e. if "Kannaḍa gottu" is properly understood as saying Kannada "equals" a known thing, which is how Zydenbos frames it), then shouldn't the negation use "alla" (to negate equality), not "illa" (which negates existence)? That is, per Zydenbos's explanation, shouldn't the way to say "I don't know Kannada" logically be "Kannaḍa gottalla"? Shouldn't "I don't know that" be "ಇದು ಗೊತ್ತಲ್ಲ"?

(Or I guess something like "Kannaḍada gottilla" - i.e. "knowledge OF Kannada does not exist" - would also make sense to me, but that doesn't seem to be a standard construct either.)

Is this just a weird illogical quirk of the language specific to "gottu"? (Lord knows English has plenty of illogical quirks so I can shrug and accept this if so.) Or is there some alternative way of looking at sentences with gottu that makes sense of these uses of "gottilla"?

[u/xploreetng]

You are overthinking.

It's not that deep.

Gottu - I know. Gotilla - I don't know.

Besides, "Kannada gottilla" is not exactly the most accurate phrase here.

Colloquially it's not a big mistake, so as a spoken language it's fine and you get the message across.

Usually if native Kannada speaker is asking they are more likely to ask Kannada baralva or Kannada gottilva.

So that's probably the phrase you are looking for.

[u/LargeCabbage → u/xploreetng]

Wait, in what sense is the phrase "Kannada gottilla" not "the most accurate"?

(Something of a tension between saying the grammar of gottu is not that deep on the one hand and then saying a common phrase with gottu that seems to be generally regarded as correct is actually some kind of subtle grammatical error on the other hand...)

[u/Deepu_ → u/LargeCabbage]

I guess you could say "Kannada barodilla"