Re: [lojban] kona, but not the coffee

[Rob Speer <rob@twcny.rr.com>]

On Sun, Jun 17, 2001 at 11:33:08AM -0400, pycyn@aol.com wrote:
> One way to mark 
> directives in Lojban is to use {ko} ({e'o} and {e'u} also work).

One thing that distresses me is to see {e'o} and {e'u} used in place of {ko}
just because {ko} seems too "harsh". I think that that is a cultural effect
that we are letting creep into Lojban. In English, if you're issuing an
imperative statement with any more substance than "Have a nice day", you have
to cover it in a couple layers of abstraction so as to not make it seem "rude".
Even masking "Answer the phone" as "Could you please answer the phone?" is
still considered to sound too direct or urgent. Hence we get constructions such
as "Do you think you could..." and "Would it trouble you to...", and in fact
the way you need to express such a statement varies depending on the situation.

This will probably happen to Lojban too, but let's not accelerate the process.
We hear {ko} and think {koga'i}; let's let {ko} mean {ko} instead.

Now, {e'o} still does serve a purpose - it is the attitudinal form of {ko}, in
cases when an attitudinal would fit better. However, it does not imply a
subject at all. So it should usually be {e'o do}, or to be perfectly clear (and
avoid another attitudinal/assertion argument) {e'o ko}, which is incidentally
what is used on the main page of lojban.org.

I wouldn't call {e'u} a directive at all. Considering a suggestion and a
directive to be the same thing is, I believe, once again the result of being
trained to hide our directives when speaking English.
-- 
Rob Speer