[lojban] vocative questions

["Adam D. Lopresto" <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

I've been wondering about this for a while, and haven't come to any good conclusions,
so I thought I'd bring it to the list.  The vocatives are very useful, but what I find
myself wanting to do is query whether a particular vocative holds for the person I'm
speaking to.  "You there?" (re'i) or "Do you understand?/Have you got that?" (je'e) or
"Ok?/Will you obey?" (vi'o).  Is there a good way to do this?  I see a few
possibilities, with different problems:

xu
    We could use a form like "re'ixu", but logically that would seem to mean "Is it
    that case that I'm ready to receive?", which wouldn't be what's wanted at all.  I
    guess it could be special cased, but that doesn't seem right.

pei
    pei does different things depending on where it is, actually serving two separate
    purposes.  After UI, it asks for a CAI indicating scale, but in other places it
    asks for a UI indicating general attitude.  A strict reading of "re'ipei", then,
    would be "I'm here, what do you think of that?".  Note that the refgram supports
    this view, parsing "ta'apei" as "Will the speaker yeild?" ("I interupt; what are
    you gonna do about it?").  Nonetheless, extending pei's behaviour after UI to also
    apply after COI would seem a minor change, and probably very useful.  Note that
    "je'epei" and "re'ipei" have seen some marginal usage already.

something else
    Suggestions very welcome.
-- 
Adam Lopresto
http://cec.wustl.edu/~adam/

"If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?"
				--Will Rogers