Re: Imperatives

[jorge@phyast.pitt.edu]

All I said is that {e'u mi'o klama} can be used instead of
{doi mi'o ko klama}, and that I prefer the {e'u mi'o} version.
I don't really care whether we call that "imperative" in Lojban.

> 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.

The subjunctive in Spanish is used only for subordinate clauses.
I'm not sure, but that seems to be what its etymology is.
The other moods in Spanish are indicative, imperative and
conditional. The indicative is used for claims. The imperative
for commands, requests, suggestions, encouragements, dares,
anything that requires the listener to perform an action. The
conditional is for counterfactuals, and it is the hardest one
to put into Lojban.

I believe {ko} is used for all those imperative functions as well.
Examples are the slogan {e'osai ko sarji la lojban} and your translation
of the Lord's prayer, where I suppose you meant the {ko}s as requests,
not commands. ("Please give us our daily bread", and not "I command
you to give us our daily bread".)

> 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.

I think some attitudinals are very much related to traditional mood,
but others have nothing to do with it.

I think the following make the sentence not a claim:

.a'o           hope
.ai            intent
.au            desire
.ii            fear

(I'm not sur about {ii}, is it fear that something might be true,
or fear because it is true?)

.e'a           permission
.e'o           request
.e'u           suggestion
.ei            obligation

Of those, {e'a}, {e'o}, {e'u} and {ei} would correspond to the
imperative in Spanish. I don't understand {e'e} and {e'i}.
It would be nice if they were some kind of imperative as well,
so that all the eV would be there. I think there should be one
for "encouragement". What does {e'e} mean? Couldn't it be
glossed as "encouragement"? And it would be nice if {e'i} was
"dare", but then its scale would have to be reversed.

> 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.

Well, imperatives only make sense when directed to agents.
{la djan klama ko} can only make sense if interpreted as
{ko klagau la djan do}.

> "ei" to me is
> even more ambiguous in this way (.ei le karce cu bevri zo'e mi'o),

Here it is hard seeing the car as having an obligation, unless it
is one of those talking cars they show on TV. If it's one of those,
then since the car is the agent, I would say it is its obligation.
Otherwise, it would be us that somehow have the obligation to
receive whatever the car is supposed to carry to us, but it would
be strange.

> 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?)

To djan, the agent.

Jorge