From cbmvax!uunet!CUVMB.BITNET!LOJBAN Mon Jun 29 15:41:43 1992 Return-Path: Received: by snark.thyrsus.com (/\==/\ Smail3.1.21.1 #21.19) id ; Mon, 29 Jun 92 15:41 EDT Received: by cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (5.57/UUCP-Project/Commodore 2/8/91) id AA04110; Mon, 29 Jun 92 15:43:21 EDT Received: from pucc.Princeton.EDU by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA25337; Mon, 29 Jun 92 15:31:14 -0400 Message-Id: <9206291931.AA25337@relay1.UU.NET> Received: from PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU by pucc.Princeton.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 7566; Mon, 29 Jun 92 15:30:37 EDT Received: by PUCC (Mailer R2.08 ptf033) id 6235; Mon, 29 Jun 92 15:26:04 EDT Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1992 20:23:39 BST Reply-To: Ivan A Derzhanski Sender: Lojban list From: Ivan A Derzhanski Subject: Phone game: TV To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann In-Reply-To: "Mark E. Shoulson"'s message of Mon, 29 Jun 1992 10:33:59 -0400 <412.9206291812@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> Status: RO X-Status: > Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1992 10:33:59 -0400 > From: "Mark E. Shoulson" > > I had {do cu .e'anai catlu le se tivni} for "There'll be no TV for you." > This led Ivan to get "here you are watching TV." I had been thinking along > the lines of Lojban's non-tensed nature; so {do catlu} means "you are a > watcher" -- not necessarily at this instant, or even in actual fact yet, > as in the "ducks are floaters" discussion I saw on here a while back. So far, so good. The telly watching _does_ take place, though, even if it is not now. So it may mean `you watched it (although you shouldn't have done)' or `you will watch (although you'd better refrain)'. > The UI would then modify it to "you are a watcher (forbidden!)" or > something like "you are a watcher without permission," thus "you are > forbidden from being a watcher" (or more accurately "your being a watcher > is forbidden"), without implying necessarily that the watching is actually > takiing place. Oops. This is where I disagree. {do cu .e'anai catlu} implies that the watching is a fact exactly in the same way as {do cu catlu}, the difference being only that it also says that the speaker disapproves of the fact. A watcher is a watcher is a watcher. > As to whether {pu'o} is the right word or not, perhaps causal links would > have been better, but I'm not sure they're critical. The English had no > causality (though it relied on implied post hoc reasoning). No, but English has no such wealth of ways to express different forms of causality as Lojban. > I was thinking > very much along the lines of the original sentence: "In the time before > you start sitting up and not playing with your food, you're a forbidden > watcher of the TV." Yes, and that's what my English said. Ivan