Subject: Revised RECORD (was RE: command)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2001 17:35:41 EDT

I was off looking at old stuff and missed the new old stuff going on now:

Directive language, language used with the purpose of getting someone to do 
the specified thing, has several forms in Lojban and is related to several 
different gismu:
minde, stidi, pikci, cpedu, and probably more, matching yet further English 
keywords. The obvious forms in Lojban are {ko} imperatives, and sentences, 
both imperatives and not, with {e'o} and {e'u} (and, more indirectly, {e'a}, 
{ei}, {e'i}). Given the lack of a clear social structure for Lojban, it is 
not yet clear what the various differences are among these different 
predicates and different sentence forms. It is said that imperatives 
(sentences containing {ko}) are not imperious and {e'o} has some history of 
representing English "Please," minimal formal politeness. But none of this 
is cast in jell-o (tm) even. So, usage really does have a role to play here, 
guided by what little there is in Book and list: both "request" and 
"suggestion" sound even less imperious than "imperative," for example. 

But on {ko} several things are clear. 1) {ko} does not have to be the first 
sumti to make an imperative; any sentence in which {ko} occurs is an 
imperative, directing the referent of {ko} to so act that the sentence 
becomes true. 2) while {ko} defaults to {do} for referent, {do} and hence 
{ko} can be reset in context by {doi} and {ko} alone can be reset by {goi}, 
so that the referent may be one self or the ones for whom one is a 
spokesperson, or one's auditor(s) or any other specifiable group -- first 
second or third person, singular or plural, as we say in languages about 
which that can be said. 

Given the range of options open and the uncertainty about what these various 
forms mean (or even can mean) it seems pointless to be suggesting MORE forms 
for directive language at this time.