Subject: [lojban] Re: [lojban-beginners] Re: Greetings, and commands

From: Rob Speer <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 2 Feb 2003 03:39:26 -0500

On Sat, Feb 01, 2003 at 11:12:55AM -0800, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> When used as a *command*, a suggestion seems to me to be obviously more
> polite by default than a statement of obligation. Not so in other
> cases, of course.

True; I suppose I went off on the wrong tangent of my rant.

The thing here is that I don't believe that a sentence with {e'u} but
not {ko} is any sort of command at all.

That does mean that I consider {ei} to be somewhat special, and this is
only because it fills a void in the language - turning a sentence into a
command without using a pronoun to do it. I don't like {ei} commands
very much, but we need them.

Then again, there are alternatives. {do'e ko} seems like it could do the
trick (making "ko" take effect without filling a sumti place) in
general. To save a syllable, {fai ko} seems to do the same thing by
somewhat cheating. If the listener can actually be expected to do
something to fulfill the command, there's also {bai ko}.

This is already out of the scope of lojban-beginners, though. I'm
cross-posting to lojban-list, and replies should probably go there.
-- 
mu'o mi'e rab.spir