Re: Imperatives

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

>From: jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU
>Subject:      Re: imperatives
>
>> Of course ".e'ucai do" ".e'ocai do" might also be taken as very strong
>> requests and/or exhortations, but would not be imperative in nature.
>
>I don't know what you mean by "imperative in nature".

Lojban has a method defined for expressing the imperative mood.

>  {e'ucai do klama}
>to me does not make the claim {do klama}, it doesn't say that you go, so
>it is not in the indicative mood.

If the choice is "imperative", "indicative", and "subjunctive", then by
my Webster's' definitions, I would call it "subjunctive".  It defines a
possible rather than actual state, and presents a metalinguistic
attitude towards it (my dictionary gives "supposition, desire,
possibility, hypothesis, etc.").

Of course, since bare Lojban predicates can refer to potential rather
than actual events, perhaps only "ca'a" and "pu'i" modals actually lead
to true indicatives, and everything else is ambiguously subjunctive or
indicative, except for "nu'o" and "na'eka'e" which are clearly
subjunctive.

That lets us leave the attitudinals to operate on an axis somewhat
independent of traditional "mood", which I think they do.

>> >Yes, that's what I'm talking about. {e'o}, {e'u} and {ei} all are
>> >useful to translate the imperative mood.
>> I don't think so, unless you are talking about imperative mood usages
>> from other languages that aren'e really imperatives.
>
>I'm talking about things that in other languages use tenses from what is
>called the imperative mood, whether they are commands or not.  If you
>like, let's call it the exhortative mood, or whatever.  Something that
>contrasts with the indicative.

Of course it is possible that the Latin terminology might be
inapplicable to Lojban, which has a quite un-Latinate structure and
semantics.

I can live with exhortative, if you feel that subjunctive grates for
you.  You come from a language background where these words have real
meaning.  I'm using linguistic jargon in a way that makes sense for a
language that is differently structured than all other languages (let's
leave guaspi and other Loglans out of this %^).

>> >How do you
>> >say "let's go to your house" without turning it into "let's go to
>> >our house"?  I would just say {e'u mi'o klama le do zdani}.
>>
>> That would get the point across without actually using an imperative
>> mood.  Especially since I have trouble thinking of most usages of
>> "let's" as being all that imperative.
>
>It doesn't matter what we call it. That sentence does not claim that
>we go, that's all. It's in the other-than-indicative mood.

If I am correct that attitudinals are independent of traditional mood,
then I think we are arguing in a realm that is not discussible using
traditional jargon.  You might easily win me over to using Lojban
terminology to distinguish "mood" as expressed by CAhA and the presence
or absence of a "ko" sumti, and whatever we want to call the
metalinguistic effect of attitudinals and discursives.

>> But if you insist on a imperative
>
>Not at all. I'm the one who is saying that {ko} is not essential.
>I certainly don't want to use it for {mi'o}.
>
>> you can "doimi'o ko doido'u". The
>> latter phrase could be replaced by "da'o" if you had no other pro-sumti
>> to avoid resetting.  We could probably adopt by convention "ko goi/po'u
>> mi'o" as much shorter ways to do imperative "let's".
>
>I don't need it. I'm quite happy with {e'u mi'o}, {e'o mi'o}, {ei mi'o}.

Properly speaking, you probably want the attitudinal attached after the
pro-sumti to clearly get the effedct you are seeking.  On the whole
sentence, it is not necessarily unambiguous whether "e'o" is 2nd person
or 3rd person request - (e'o la djan cu klama mi'o) does not seem to me
imperative to mi'o in the way that mi'o goi ko would be.  "ei" to me is
even more ambiguous in this way (.ei le karce cu bevri zo'e mi'o), and
"e'u" can also become real tricky (e'u la djan bevri zo'e mi'o, in
response to a description of a problem djan is facing that happens to
involve us - is this imperative to us, or to djan?)

But the fact that attitudinal scope problems exist alone is enough to
make be skeptical that imperative mood (which governs a verb != a
predicate) is something expressed by attitudinals that operate
scope-wise independently of the predicate and the underlying/implied
'verb'.

lojbab