From a.rosta@ntlworld.com Fri Aug 03 16:40:00 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: a.rosta@ntlworld.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_2_0); 3 Aug 2001 23:40:00 -0000 Received: (qmail 83674 invoked from network); 3 Aug 2001 23:39:59 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l8.egroups.com with QMQP; 3 Aug 2001 23:39:59 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mta06-svc.ntlworld.com) (62.253.162.46) by mta2 with SMTP; 3 Aug 2001 23:39:59 -0000 Received: from andrew ([62.253.88.85]) by mta06-svc.ntlworld.com (InterMail vM.4.01.03.00 201-229-121) with SMTP id <20010803233957.EVRC6330.mta06-svc.ntlworld.com@andrew> for ; Sat, 4 Aug 2001 00:39:57 +0100 To: Subject: RE: [lojban] commands Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2001 00:38:54 +0100 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 From: "And Rosta" Craig: > coi rodo > > On the Portland Pattern Repository's wiki, it was observed that there is no > way to express an imperative in lojban without using ko. Ko has no plural, It basically already is plural. That is, it can refer to several addressees, and it is always logically safer to think of sumti not explicitly marked as singulars as referring to plurals. > and so you can't say 'you all imperative' type constructions, a la > 'Disperse, ye rebels, disperse!' Therefore, I have just proposed on the > Lojban wiki a cmavo, xu'a, which would function like xu but make the bridi a > command, allowing plural imperatives and statements like 'let's go.' Clearly > we need commands other than ko, which is actually rather limited. You can say {ro ko}. The usual rendering of your {xu'a} is {ei}. > 1. Am I unknowingly inventing a way to do something that can really already > be done? Yes. > 2. What do you think of this proposal, if I'm not? Were you not, it'd be a good proposal. All the same, I think this proposing of new but unnecessary cmavo is a useful learning strategy. It's very good to work from what you want to say rather than to say what the language makes it easy and obvious to say. I wish more Lojbanists worked that way. --And.