From LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU Tue Jan 16 19:37:21 1996 Received: from vms.dc.lsoft.com (vms.dc.lsoft.com [205.186.43.2]) by locke.ccil.org (8.6.9/8.6.10) with ESMTP id TAA01113 for ; Tue, 16 Jan 1996 19:37:16 -0500 Message-Id: <199601170037.TAA01113@locke.ccil.org> Received: from PEACH.EASE.LSOFT.COM (205.186.43.4) by vms.dc.lsoft.com (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.0a) with SMTP id C1278FE7 ; Tue, 16 Jan 1996 17:37:22 -0500 Date: Tue, 16 Jan 1996 16:36:40 -0600 Reply-To: "Steven M. Belknap" Sender: Lojban list From: "Steven M. Belknap" Subject: Re: laws, commandments, requirements To: John Cowan Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2494 I combined Scott's and Mark's suggestions (probably into a nongrammatic mess). Here it is: "Prohibited: To make it true that person(s) tread on this-here grassy field" (presumably separate signs address the issues of dogs and tanks...) la skot cusku dihe >.i pe'i lu na curmi lenu stapa le sasfoi li'u "I opine that quote someone/something unspecified is not granted permission to perform the event treading on the grass field. unquote" What about ants? Surely we don't intend to prohibit them? > >>I thought about using ko with a relative clause specifying who is the >>I am referring to (sort of like Thou shalt not of the King James Version of >>the Christian Bible). Ko seems tied to do, so maybe that's not right. > >But, does not {do} refer to the reader of the sign? > Not necessarily; for example, imagine two persons, one sighted and one nonsighted who are approaching the grass. Both are expected to adhere to the prohibition. Or imagine a fraternity upperclassman dumping some innocent, blind-folded pledges from the back of a dumptruck onto the grass. Clearly the upperclassman is at least partially at fault for violating the prohibition. >Generally, the referent of "do" is the intended recipient of the >communication. If the value of "do" is not obvious from context, >one uses a vocative phrase to set its value. > >{ge'e doi xiskri ko na catra} la mark cusku dihe >Well, in the Biblical sense, I don't think you really need to go outside a >simple negative second-person imperative. That's how most of the Bible's >commands are worded anyway. But you're right that that is needlessly >restrictive and unlojbanical. What's probably simpler is just to use >observatives and appropriate UIs: > >e'anai stapa lei sasfoi > "Prohibited: (Unspecified) stepping on meadow(s) >note using e'anai for prohibition, and the x2 place of stapa, and a mass. This is simple, and might be better than my version, but I wanted to limit the command to persons and specify that the referent meadow is this here particular meadow. Isn't mark's version a bit broad? Maybe the event abstraction is not necessary in my version, though. Opinions? cohomihe la stivn Steven M. Belknap, M.D. Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Medicine University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria email: sbelknap@uic.edu Voice: 309/671-3403 Fax: 309/671-8413