Message-Id: <199601202033.PAA02441@locke.ccil.org>
Date:         Wed, 17 Jan 1996 14:48:02 -0600
Reply-To: "Steven M. Belknap" <sbelknap@UIC.EDU>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: "Steven M. Belknap" <sbelknap@UIC.EDU>
Subject:      eho naku ko stapa loi sasfoi
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Status: OR
Content-Length: 2845

Robert Chassell:
>In the case of a prohibition, the attitudinal should apply to someone
>other than the writer of the sign.  This is what {se'inai} is for.
>
>    .e'anai se'inai ko stapa loi sasfoi
>
>     Feel that you are prohibited from: <Command> walk on the grass!
>

How would you interpret:

<sehinai ko na stapa loi sasfoi>

Would it be something like:

"Hey you! Keep off the the grass!" (somewhat rude?)

>Alternatively, make it false that you walk on the grass:
>
>    ko na stapa loi sasfoi
>
>    [Imperative] make it false that you walk on what is really a
>    mass of the individual that is the grassy expanse.
>

This would work as long as we want to reach only the reader of the sign,
right? I suppose that might be the practical impact of the English "Keep
off the grass" I think <ko na stapa loi sasfoi> means:

"Reader-of-this-sign, do not walk on the grass."


>The sign writer can be polite:
>
>    e'o ko na stapa loi sasfoi
>
>    [I, the sign writer, feel the emotion of requesting you]
>    [Imperative] make it false that you walk on the grass.
>
>or, my preferred rendering:
>
>    e'o naku ko stapa loi sasfoi
>    Please, let it be false, that you walk on the grass.
>    Please do not walk on the grass..
>

These last two sound like the kind of signs one might see in a "kinder,
gentler" nation. I understand Great Britain has more polite signs than the
USA or Germany.

These would be very good signs that I might put up on my own yard, that is,
a polite request, without force of law, to please not ruin my lawn
(Actually, I think I *will* put such a sign on my yard!) These utterances
do not give the implication of the force of law or adherence to a rule. I
am still uncertain how one might write, say, a city ordinance to specify
this grass-protecting action. I am struggling with how to apply ko
elegantly to a third person:


<ti flalu ka ko po remna guhe na stapa loi sasfoi kei la cikagos lavi sinxa>

"This is a law which specifies the abstraction that all you people not walk
on the grass, such law being a law of Chicago and applying under conditions
where this sign is posted. (The legislation includes a picture of the
sign.)"

Is this a correct use of <ka...kei> and <po...guhe>? I am using <lavi
sinxa> because I am assuming that the syntax of <flalu> is flexible enough
that I don't have to explicitly say "in places where this sign is posted",
as that seems to be  implied by the "under conditions" place, but perhaps I
am wrong. All this parenthesizing reminds me of algebraic notation
calculators; that's why I got a Hewlett-Packard calculator so I could use
postfix.

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