Subject: le/lei/la/lai ... Brutus & the rest

From: "Alfred W. Tueting (Tüting)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 13:43:57 -0000

I'm wondering if there is a (concise?) Lojban way to be precise with
regard to legal purposes (I'm thinking here of criminal law):
E.g. Brutus and the rest killed Caesar. Using /le/la/ implies that
the one or all I have in mind (i.e. each single one) committed the 
crime of stabbing a person named C. (from context here: the same
person in one event). That's okay here, because each one was 
using his own dagger ;)
Using /lei/lai/ instead implies that there was a party that committed
the murder (yet not stating whether or not each member of 
the group really stabbed him, actively or only mentally supported the
action in some way/degree - or (involved in the plan or not) 
just stood aside on the forum or did not even go there. It's
sufficient (for the use of lei/lai) to be a member of the concrete or
even 
just virtuel unit or set (or how ever you want to call it).
Compared to the 'scale' of e.g. zi/za/zu/, vi/va/vu/ and other even
more graduated Lojban means (scalars), isn't there kind of a gap 
here to express those 'shades' of relationship between "guilty and
not-guilty"?

.aulun.