[engelang] Xorban: co'e, co'o & co'u - engelang messages

On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 8:57 AM, selpa'i <seladwa@hidden.email> wrote:

> > co mba'a klma'a "As for me, I'm going".
>
> Oh, I did not realize co was also for marking the topic. Okay then,
> that
> solves that problem too. Of course now co is much vaguer than I
> thought,
> but oh well, if it should become a problem, we can just add more
> illocutionary operators.
>
>
> Oddly, it turns out that it's hard to identify a real difference between
> a vocative and topic switching to the second person entity:
>
> co ptfe'e, ca'i xe sme jnve'eke
> Father, what do you think? (vocative)
> = As far as you father, what do you think? (topic)
>
> If there turns out to be a real difference in some cases, I have "co'o"
> (top.) and "co'e" (voc.) allocated in the back of my mind.

Hm, true. I think I found it weird to sign a message with "co" if it's
setting the topic, but *at the end* of the mail.

"co" is not really a topic marker. It's a variable identifier that can be paraphrased as "I hereby make the identification F (for whatever reason)" which happens to be a good way to mark topics.

co ptfe'e, ca'i xe sme jnve'eke
I hereby make the identification that you are the father; what do you think?

co mlta'i nlca'aka'i
I hereby make the identification that a'i are cats. I like a'i.

co ma'a mke
I hereby make the identification that I am Mike.

Maybe however it would not hurt anything to assign a few "co" variants:

co'e: I hereby make the identification F because I have something to say to you.
co'o: I hereby make the identification F because I have something to say about it.
co'u: I hereby make the identification F and then my message is complete & over to you.

"co'e" and "co'o" are usually going to be redundant, because in F the first will pragmatically need to contain "e'e" and the latter "V'i", but they may occasionally be helpful when F contains both.

co'e pnda'ike'e le jnva'ake djne'eke.
Friend of a'i, you know what I think.

co'o pnda'ike'e le jnva'ake djne'eke.
As far as you being friend of a'i, you know what I think.

Whether or not we need those two, "co'u" seems useful because it definitely adds something above simple "co"; it would be equivalent to L "mu'o mi'e".