Re: "ko" considered bad

[jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU]

ls lojbab cusku di'e

> You get the imperative of all the other pro-sumti by saying "doimi"  doido'o"
> etc. if it is not clear who "ko" is referring to.

That can be done sometimes, but it is not a general solution. It fails
if you want to say "let's go to your house", for example. {doi mi'o ko
klama le do zdani} says "let's go to our house", because {doi mi'o} has
changed {do} to mean {mi'o}.

> Of course, if you are talking
>  to yourself, it ius obvious who "ko" is.

It is not necessarily obvious to the rest of the audience.

> And if you are talking to someone
> else, the essential thing to communicate is what THEY are supposed to do.

When that is the essential thing to communicate, then you use {ko}, but
why couldn't there be a case where the essential thing is an imperative
to {do'o} for example? What if you want to say "you (and others) go to
your house (yours alone)". In English you can't do it easily, but in
Lojban there shouldn't be a problem because of the do/do'o distinction.
And yet there is a problem, because do'o doesn't have an imperative
version!

The general solution is to say {ei do'o klama le do zdani}, or whatever
is the right attitudinal for the context.

I'm not suggesting never to use {ko}. All I'm saying is that it is not
a general solution to express imperatives, it is just a convenient
short device for the most common case.

I thought of another case where even modern English uses a third person
imperative: when the subject is "nobody", "somebody" or "everybody".

        ei noda pencu ti
        Nobody touch this.

        e'o da sidju mi
        Somebody help me!

        ei roda punji lei ri cukta le jubme
        Everybody put their books on the table.

Aren't those third person imperatives in English?

Jorge