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Date: Sat, 17 Oct 2009 01:28:52 -0700 (PDT)
From: Lindar Greenwood <lindarthebard@yahoo.com>
Subject: [jbovlaste] Re: What would happen if xu and ko were put together?
To: jbovlaste@lojban.org
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----- Original Message ----
> From: John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>
> To: jbovlaste@lojban.org
> Sent: Sat, October 17, 2009 1:05:22 AM
> Subject: [jbovlaste] Re: What would happen if xu and ko were put together?
> 
> David Zhang scripsit:
> > What would happen if xu and ko were put together?
> 
> The listener would stare at you blankly, just as he would in any other
> language if you tried to express a question and a command simultaneously.
> 
> -- 
> While staying with the Asonu, I met a man from      John Cowan
> the Candensian plane, which is very much like      cowan@ccil.org
> ours, only more of it consists of Toronto.          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
>         --Ursula K. Le Guin, Changing Planes

I think that this will grow into a bigger debate as time goes on.
Not everybody feels that way, John. There are a few people that agree with me in the essential interpretation of the "ko mo" problem. {.i ko klama ma}, to me, means something like, "Go wherever you're going, but tell me where it is.". I've heard the argument that there's no priority order (which is totally irrelevant to the interpretation, but people keep asserting that it is), and that I actually want to use {kau} in there, which I don't. I am actively commanding somebody to do something, but regardless of that command, I would like to know the answer to the question referred by {ma}; I am also actively asking somebody a question, and regardless of the answer, I would like them to comply with my order. I can imagine Lojbanic parents saying this to their teenage offspring on a regular basis. Another good example is {.i ko citka ma}, which to me comes off as, "Eat something and tell me what you're going to eat." (poor translation aside).

So I really do, in all honesty, use this linguistic pattern, and I see no reason why it's wrong.

However, regarding xu and ko? It sounds like an awkward post-jbogugde polite-ism to sound like the English "Could you please ______?". I don't see that it's necessarily -incorrect- as everybody wants to seem to assert, but it's certainly a very strange thing to say. To take it to extremes to demonstrate how strange it sounds to me, I use this (poor) example: "Go get me a pop. Y/N?"

As a final note, I feel like a lot of the community is being extremely negative in considering interpretations of the language outside of the views/opinions of the elite oldbies. You say with this zealotous fire that ko and ma in the same bridi just doesn't make sense, but I use it and get understood regularly when it comes up, and nobody has provided an actual solid argument against why it doesn't make sense other than simply stating that it makes no sense. I really do mean both ".i ko klama zo'e" and ".i do klama ma" at the same time, and literally ".i ko klama ma" all at once. Even if there was a parse order and you had to read it as ".i do klama ma" first, then with 'ko', or vice-versa, I still mean both regardless of which one you read first, assuming you have to read it as one without the other, then the inverse.

So, I would appreciate if somebody could pose a decent argument counter to my interpretation, however I am still somewhat upset by how negatively a lot of the community has reacted to different interpretations of things. Even if those interpretations are wrong, we can build on that to touch up the cracks and seams.