Re: [lojban] Re: Duty, promice etc...

["Jorge Llambías" <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

Promises, requests, commands and others are *unrealized events*. If and when
they become real events, they cease being promises, requests and commands.
That's why we don't "do" promises, requests and commands, but rather we
"carry them out", from the world of unrealized events and into reality. We only
"do" real events.

Promises and requests can be "made" by the speaker, the speaker mostly
unconstrained when creating these imaginary events. Orders and permissions,
on the other hand, can only be "given", because the speaker is constrained
to select them from the preestablished domain of events they have authority
over. Once they are "given" by the speaker to the hearer, the hearer "has"
them until they "carry them out" into reality.

Similarly wishes can be "made" since any implausible unrealized event can
be wished for (indeed wishes only tend to "come true" in fairy tales or
in advertisements). Hopes and fears on the other hand, which are events
unknown to be realized, can't be "made", they can only be "had", because they
must already be among the believed to be realizable events. Wishes, hopes
and fears too cease to be wishes, hopes and fears when and if they become
real events. These differ from promises, requests and commands in that they
need not be "carried out" by anyone from the world of unrealized events and
into reality, they may just happen and thus become real events by themselves.

Promises, requests and commands can be "made" and/or "given" in many
different ways, directly or indirectly. The way to "make" them
directly, in Lojban,
is to invoke the imaginary event by saying a bridi that describes them and
tagging the bridi with the corresponding attitudinal or vocative:

  nu'e do'u mi ba dunda lo relselxi'u do
  Promise: I will give you a bicycle.

  .e'i lo smuci cu nenri lo re moi dacru
  Constraint: the spoons go in the second drawer.

(I chose a third person command to avoid the quirkiness of {do} -> {ko} in
commands, requests, etc.)

Since promises, requests and orders are events (albeit unrealized ones),
they can be referred to in Lojban with {lo nu ...}: {lo nu mi ba dunda
lo relselxi'u do}, {lo nu lo smuci cu nenri lo re moi dacru}. And we can also,
of course, refer to these unrealized events by other descriptions {lo se nupre},
{lo se cpedu}, {lo se minde}, etc.

It would be interesting to figure out how to say "carry out" in Lojban, i.e.
how do we describe the action of taking an unrealized event that is a
promise, a request, an order, etc. and bring it into reality. {zukte}, as it
has been pointed out, is not quite it, because it gives no indication that
the done deed is one that has been taken from realm where promises,
requests and orders live.  I proposed {mansa} but I'm not quite happy with
it (and its place structure is ordered the wrong way anyway). Any ideas?

Also we need words for "breaking" a promise, i.e. removing it from the world
of unrealized events where promises live by destroying it, not by "carrying
it out" ({fliba} has been suggested, does it work?) and similarly words for
"rejecting" or "accepting" a suggestion, etc. Lojban seems still to be very
underdeveloped in this area.

mu'o mi'e xorxes