Message-Id: <199601170023.CAA15447@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Tue, 16 Jan 1996 19:21:15 -0500
Reply-To: "Robert J. Chassell" <bob@GNU.AI.MIT.EDU>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: "Robert J. Chassell" <bob@GNU.AI.MIT.EDU>
Subject:      Re: "Do not Walk on the Grass"
To: Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
In-Reply-To:  <199601161902.OAA28690@shekel.mcl.cs.columbia.edu>
              (shoulson@cs.columbia.edu)
Content-Length: 1990
Lines: 72

For

    "Do not Walk on the Grass"

someone suggested:

    e'anai stapa lei sasfoi

However, I interpret this utterance as meaning:

    <prohibited>  <observative> Look! a walker on what
    may not be, but which I call a meadow.

meaning:

    I [the writer of this sign]
    feel an emotion that prohibits me from looking at
    a walker on the grass!

To me, {e'anai} is the emotion that I feel when I feel I am prohibited
from doing something.  {e'anai} is what I say to myself when I am
driving faster than the speed limit.

{stapa lei sasfoi} is an observative, a `walker on the grass'.


{e'a} means that feeling permission, I can make the potential world
expressed in the predicate a reality.  For example, {e'a mi cadzu}
means that `feeling permission, I walk'.

{e'anai} means that feeling prohibition, I can make the potential world a
reality.

    .e'anai mi sutra klama sazri lo karce

    Feeling prohibited, I quickly-type-of going-type-of operate a car.

    Knowing that I am speeding, I drive fast.


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!

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.

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..

--

    Robert J. Chassell               bob@gnu.ai.mit.edu
    25 Rattlesnake Mountain Road     bob@rattlesnake.com
    Stockbridge, MA 01262-0693 USA   (413) 298-4725