How do you propose an idea for someone else to accept, reject, or counteroffer, as in this conversation?
A. Where would you like to have dinner tonight?
B. How about Rex Aztecorum on Fourth Street?
I'm thinking that visne is not quite right, because the idea here is not simply to ask if the other person would like do it, but to toss out an idea, perhaps to elicit a better idea. Also, I think visne wants an accusative object, whereas often this type of construction fills in a blank that would go in another case. The example above seems to want to be in the ablative case, as does, "When would you like to meet?" "How about Tuesday morning?"
In English, one can indicate that one is offering an idea to kick around, perhaps in hopes of eliciting alternatives, rather than merely asking "yes or no", by the "vaguifying" particle about, as in "How about 8:00?" or "What about seeing a movie?" The relevant sense of about seems to be that of directing attention to its object, made infamous in the last couple years in the phrase "What about Hillary?"—i.e. "Please direct your attention to Hillary Clinton" (and away from whatever iniquity of Trump's was just described). Another way to make this conversational distinction is to say "How does ____ sound?"
All of these can receive an answer that accepts the proposal, though. They give the other person a way to indicate consent to a shared decision immediately without pushing for it. In English, "Do you want to eat at 8:00?" is really a yes-or-no question, not a request to negotiate a time to eat favorable to both you and your interlocutor. The conditional mood with no apodosis also changes the meaning from yes-or-no to "Please give consent or suggest an alternative", as in "Would you like to eat at 8:00?"
On the other hand, maybe visne can carry the meaning of asking for alternatives as much as for consent; I'm afraid I still haven't read Plautus or Terence, so I don't yet have a feeling for this sort of conversational subtlety. ;) Does conversational Latin have a way to make this distinction? Does it work with cases other than the accusative?
