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Subject: [jbovlaste] Re: What would happen if xu and ko were put together?
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From: John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>
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Lindar Greenwood scripsit:

> 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.".

That would convince me if "do klama ma" meant "Tell me where you are going",
but it does not; it means "Where are you going?"  It's true that in some
English contexts questions are implicitly commands, as when your boss
says "What are you working on?", but this is not so in the general case:
rather, "Where are you going" means "I ask where you are going", whereas
"Tell me where you are going" means "I command you to tell me where you are
going."

> I've heard the argument that there's no priority order (which is totally
> irrelevant to the interpretati on, but people keep asserting that it is)

No, it is relevant.  By reinterpreting the question "what?" as a command
"tell me what!", you are effectively giving commanding priority over
asking.  If you go the other way, interpreting "Obey!" as "Will you
obey?", you get "Where are you going, and will you obey my command to
go there?"  That's the kind of ambiguity we don't want.

> 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 quite agree that you can both ask and command, but I deny that you can
do so in a single speech act; they are inherently two separate speech acts.

Of course, if the community decides that in the context of a command
"ma" means "tell me what!" rather than "what?", I can only agree that
that's what the language has become.  But it seems bizarre to me.

> However, regarding xu and ko? It sounds like an awkward post-jbogugde
> polite-ism to sound like the English "Could you please ______?".

That, of course, is an ordinary command tagged for politeness (which is
the way it's done in Chinese, e.g.)

> 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.

I do recognize that as a problem.

> You say with this zealotous fire

Trust me, I'm not a zealot about much of anything.

> that ko and ma in the same bridi just doesn't make sense,

It doesn't make sense to *me*.

> I really do mean both ".i ko klama zo'e" and ".i do klama ma" at the
> same time,

I don't think there necessarily has to be a way to express those at the
same time, any more than there's a way to express "I'll go with you"
and "You stink" at the same time.  (Or is there?)

> 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.

The "priority" issue, as I've tried to explain above, is not about
which statement is effectively made first, but about which speech act
is dominant.

> Even if those interpretations are wrong, we can build on that to touch
> up the cracks and seams.

That is what the "elite oldbies" have always wanted to happen.

-- 
How they ever reached any  conclusion at all    <cowan@ccil.org>
is starkly unknowable to the human mind.        http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
        --"Backstage Lensman", Randall Garrett