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From: Rob Speer <rspeer@MIT.EDU>
To: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org, lojban-list@lojban.org
Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: Greetings, and commands
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On Sat, Feb 01, 2003 at 11:12:55AM -0800, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> When used as a *command*, a suggestion seems to me to be obviously more
> polite by default than a statement of obligation.  Not so in other
> cases, of course.

True; I suppose I went off on the wrong tangent of my rant.

The thing here is that I don't believe that a sentence with {e'u} but
not {ko} is any sort of command at all.

That does mean that I consider {ei} to be somewhat special, and this is
only because it fills a void in the language - turning a sentence into a
command without using a pronoun to do it. I don't like {ei} commands
very much, but we need them.

Then again, there are alternatives. {do'e ko} seems like it could do the
trick (making "ko" take effect without filling a sumti place) in
general. To save a syllable, {fai ko} seems to do the same thing by
somewhat cheating. If the listener can actually be expected to do
something to fulfill the command, there's also {bai ko}.

This is already out of the scope of lojban-beginners, though. I'm
cross-posting to lojban-list, and replies should probably go there.
-- 
mu'o mi'e rab.spir