It's my personal point of view, but I don't think lojban should try to be "culturally neutral" from the point of view of grammar, in the sense of not having grammar more similar to one existing language or another. The grammar of lojban should have nothing to do with the grammar of natural languages. Instead, it should strive to be logical, efficient and precise in the _expression_ of meaning. If if turns out similar to one or another natural language in certain aspects, that's merely an unimportant coincidence. "let's" is not expressed as a pronoun in any of the 3 languages I speak. Neither is regular imperative. However, in lojban imperative is expressed by a sumti cmavo which is logical, simple and allows for easy _expression_ of very generic imperative sentences. If so, why shouldn't "let's" be the same?
On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 12:03 AM, Ivo Doko <ivo.doko@gmail.com> wrote:2009/9/9 Squark Rabinovich <top.squark@gmail.com>:
> The fact it is so in certain natural languages doesn't mean we should do itWell how *should* we do it? Lojban is supposed to be culturally
> this way in lojban !
neutral, but it seems that if we decide on saying "let's <VERB>"
either as a first-person plural imperative of the <VERB> or as
something else it's going to end up being culturally biased. To me the
concept that "let's <VERB>" is an imperative form seems completely
natural, but it may be only because that's how it is in my native
language.