Making sense of interrogatives

So here's a surprisingly counterintuitive translation question: What's your name?

I had previously told Marisa Kea sa se noa? for this bit of extremely simple first-day-of-language-class material, but that's not right at all: that would mean "what's your name like?" Similarly, kea sa ta? looks like "what is he?" but really means "what's he like?" You could rephrase it as "what's his set membership?" or "what indefinite predicate can describe him?" as opposed to keka sa ta? which means "what is his identity?" or "what definite predicate is he a match with?" We're talking about identity with this name question -- matching sets 1 to 1 -- so oddly enough I think it should be Keka sa se noa?

Wait, here's a crazy thought: should a question intended to elicit a name actually be headed by kele??? That's never existed before but maybe it should: Kele sa se noa? So not "indicate to me which one out of a given set is your name," like maybe names on a list, but basically "tell me the name of your name." If that's possible, this could even just be Kele sa se?

I think that's actually exactly right, and finally begins to address some of my earliest questions from the end of this post back in 2002. What about the other specifiers? Does keko mean anything? What about kehu and kepo? I'm thinking maybe the last two don't since they're technically quantifiers rather than determiners, but I'm not sure about keko. "What...noninstantiated quality?" When would that be used? I think we'll have to come back to that one later.

Thinking more about kele, I think maybe it could elicit more than just le phrases. For example, kele sa to puu? "what's the name of that tree? what kind of tree is that?" It certainly wouldn't be kea, because kea sa to puu? would be "what is that tree like?" Keka sa to puu would be "which tree is that?" I suppose that could be answered with "pine" or "spruce"...well, maybe there's some gray area:

Kea sa to puu? = What's that tree like? What is that tree?
Keka sa to puu? = What tree is that? Which tree is that?
Kele sa to puu? = What is that tree called?

The second one could give an identity answer of "the first one on the list," "the one we were talking about," or a general answer of "spruce." The third one could give a specific answer of "Arthur," or a general category answer of "spruce." Even the first one could have an answer starting "Well, it's called a spruce..." I think the important thing isn't picking the precise right one for the application, it's the ability to use the difference between them to potentially resolve the nature of the inquiry in a more granular way.

Next up: asking about meaning, the thing that had me really confused back in 2002. It's one thing to ask what a specific tree is, but it's quite another to ask what a tree is in general: in other words, what "tree" means. As far as I'm aware, there's no prescribed way to do this in Koa at all at this point. Kea sa le puu? And/or do we need a verb of meaning, Kea sa le puu i X? Let's think about it.