Re: imperative mood

[Chris Bogart <cbogart@quetzal.com>]

Lojbab:
>> I've often wondered if there is some subtlety to third person imperatives
>> that is distinct from a normal 2nd person "let", so that we can see if the
>> subtlety can be expressed in Lojban.

Xorxes:
>Do you really feel a second person imperative when you say "let him do it"?
>You can even say it to no one. I don't think that the fact that it is
>a second person imperative in _form_ takes anything out or adds anything
>to the meaning. The same thing happens with "let's go". It is not really
>a second person imperative, even though in form it is.

I'm glad we don't have an explicit 3rd p. imperative in Lojban, because I
don't think I like them.

Correct me if I'm misunderstanding this, but it seems to me that these are
all 3rd person imperatives (.e'u ko'a gasnu) :

  let him do it
  make him do it
  tell him to do it
  have him do it
  may he do it!

To me these all have a range of distinct meanings.  In the second person
imperative it's clear that you want the listener to do a certain thing.  But
it seems to me that a 3rd p. imperative really is a disguised 2nd person
imperative.  You're not *really* ordering 3 to do something, you're ordering
2 to do something to or for 3; or maybe you're just wishing aloud to 2 about 3.

The existence of a 3rd imperative seems to me to be a source of bad
ambiguity in some natlangs.  Does ".e'u ko'a cu gugde cliva" mean "allow
them to emigrate" or "exile them"?  It's an important distinction,
especially if ko'a cu so'imei gi'e djica so'i frica.  In Japanese there's a
verb affix "sase" that has exactly this ambiguity; is that true of other
languages with 3rd imperatives?

(BTW I think "let's" is a special case.  It's only historically a
contraction of "let us"; I can't think of any situation where you could
contract "let us" or decontract "let's" without either considerably changing
the meaning or sounding archaic. (A flea and a fly in a flue, were trapped,
so what could they do?  "Let us flee", said the fly; "Let us fly", said the
flea; so they flew through a flaw in the flue.))