Received: from VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (vms.dc.lsoft.com [205.186.43.2]) by locke.ccil.org (8.6.9/8.6.10) with ESMTP id PAA01315 for ; Fri, 13 Oct 1995 15:40:10 -0400 Message-Id: <199510131940.PAA01315@locke.ccil.org> Received: from PEACH.EASE.LSOFT.COM (205.186.43.4) by VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (LSMTP for OpenVMS v0.1a) with SMTP id 70873525 ; Fri, 13 Oct 1995 15:10:06 -0400 Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 15:06:04 EDT Reply-To: jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU Sender: Lojban list From: jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU Subject: Re: "ko" considered bad X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan Status: OR X-From-Space-Date: Fri Oct 13 15:40:16 1995 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU ls lojbab cusku di'e > You get the imperative of all the other pro-sumti by saying "doimi" doido'o" > etc. if it is not clear who "ko" is referring to. That can be done sometimes, but it is not a general solution. It fails if you want to say "let's go to your house", for example. {doi mi'o ko klama le do zdani} says "let's go to our house", because {doi mi'o} has changed {do} to mean {mi'o}. > Of course, if you are talking > to yourself, it ius obvious who "ko" is. It is not necessarily obvious to the rest of the audience. > And if you are talking to someone > else, the essential thing to communicate is what THEY are supposed to do. When that is the essential thing to communicate, then you use {ko}, but why couldn't there be a case where the essential thing is an imperative to {do'o} for example? What if you want to say "you (and others) go to your house (yours alone)". In English you can't do it easily, but in Lojban there shouldn't be a problem because of the do/do'o distinction. And yet there is a problem, because do'o doesn't have an imperative version! The general solution is to say {ei do'o klama le do zdani}, or whatever is the right attitudinal for the context. I'm not suggesting never to use {ko}. All I'm saying is that it is not a general solution to express imperatives, it is just a convenient short device for the most common case. I thought of another case where even modern English uses a third person imperative: when the subject is "nobody", "somebody" or "everybody". ei noda pencu ti Nobody touch this. e'o da sidju mi Somebody help me! ei roda punji lei ri cukta le jubme Everybody put their books on the table. Aren't those third person imperatives in English? Jorge