Re: Robin does the xorban (was Re: [lojban] Baby Words: "you're right" and orders.)

["Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG" <lojbab@lojban.org>]

.arpis. wrote:
> Are constraint (e'i) and obligation (ei) such different concepts that we
> want two separate short words for them, especially at the expense of
> having a short way to be explicit about commands?

They certainly are different emotionally, and we are talking about words 
expressing emotional affect.

I do many things out of a feeling of obligation that I do not in fact 
feel constrained/compelled to do.

More importantly, a command is not really an emotional affect.  Perhaps 
"feeling in authority" would be an emotional affect that might mark 
something as a command, but that is probably the ga'i that Robin found 
unsatisfying (per his original post on the topic).  koga'i would seem to 
me to mean "do it, because >I< said so".

Myself, I've always considered that an unmarked ko is a command, which 
is where ".e'osai ko sarji" originated from - without it, I am 
commanding the listener to support Lojban, which is an unseemly sort of 
thing to command.  .e'o and other words can soften a command to 
something weaker than a command, but unmarked, it is a command for real.

Wanting to emphasize the command nature, perhaps for 
immediacy/intensity, I might mark the ko itself with cai (which 
conveniently, not by design, happens to be similar in sound to "ca" for 
"now"), but none of the indicators.

.e'unai and .e'anai are often attitudinals one would attach to a 
negative command (possibly on the ko, or possibly on the selbri), and 
marking them with cai, would add emphasis to the negative (and 
presumably there is a na in the sentence as well).

If we needed something other than ko to mark a command, it would have to 
be a discursive, rather than an attitudinal.  Same grammar, but 
discursives are CVV rather than VV.  But any such marker seems like it 
would be redundant to me.

lojbab
--
Bob LeChevalier    lojbab@lojban.org    www.lojban.org
President and Founder, The Logical Language Group, Inc.

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