From rob@twcny.rr.com Sun Jun 17 10:00:15 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: rob@twcny.rr.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_1_3); 17 Jun 2001 17:00:14 -0000 Received: (qmail 85001 invoked from network); 17 Jun 2001 17:00:14 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by l9.egroups.com with QMQP; 17 Jun 2001 17:00:14 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mailout3.nyroc.rr.com) (24.92.226.168) by mta1 with SMTP; 17 Jun 2001 17:00:13 -0000 Received: from mail1.twcny.rr.com (mail1-1 [24.92.226.139]) by mailout3.nyroc.rr.com (8.11.2/RoadRunner 1.03) with ESMTP id f5HGwnh21961 for ; Sun, 17 Jun 2001 12:58:49 -0400 (EDT) Received: from riff ([24.95.175.101]) by mail1.twcny.rr.com (Post.Office MTA v3.5.3 release 223 ID# 0-59787U250000L250000S0V35) with ESMTP id com for ; Sun, 17 Jun 2001 12:29:27 -0400 Received: from rob by riff with local (Exim 3.22 #1 (Debian)) id 15BfNo-0001aP-00 for ; Sun, 17 Jun 2001 12:26:40 -0400 Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2001 12:26:40 -0400 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] kona, but not the coffee Message-ID: <20010617122640.C5918@twcny.rr.com> Reply-To: rob@twcny.rr.com References: <108.1616e21.285e27b4@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <108.1616e21.285e27b4@aol.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.18i X-Is-It-Not-Nifty: www.sluggy.com From: Rob Speer 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