Phone game: TV

[Ivan A Derzhanski <cbmvax!uunet!COGSCI.ED.AC.UK!iad>]

>  Date:        Mon, 29 Jun 1992 10:33:59 -0400
>  From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <shoulson@EDU.COLUMBIA.CTR>
>
>  I had {do cu .e'anai catlu le se tivni} for "There'll be no TV for you."
>  This led Ivan to get "here you are watching TV."  I had been thinking along
>  the lines of Lojban's non-tensed nature; so {do catlu} means "you are a
>  watcher" -- not necessarily at this instant, or even in actual fact yet,
>  as in the "ducks are floaters" discussion I saw on here a while back.

So far, so good.  The telly watching _does_ take place, though, even
if it is not now.  So it may mean `you watched it (although you
shouldn't have done)' or `you will watch (although you'd better refrain)'.

>  The UI would then modify it to "you are a watcher (forbidden!)" or
>  something like "you are a watcher without permission," thus "you are
>  forbidden from being a watcher" (or more accurately "your being a watcher
>  is forbidden"), without implying necessarily that the watching is actually
>  takiing place.

Oops.  This is where I disagree.  {do cu .e'anai catlu} implies that
the watching is a fact exactly in the same way as {do cu catlu}, the
difference being only that it also says that the speaker disapproves
of the fact.  A watcher is a watcher is a watcher.

>  As to whether {pu'o} is the right word or not, perhaps causal links would
>  have been better, but I'm not sure they're critical.  The English had no
>  causality (though it relied on implied post hoc reasoning).

No, but English has no such wealth of ways to express different forms
of causality as Lojban.

>  I was thinking
>  very much along the lines of the original sentence:  "In the time before
>  you start sitting up and not playing with your food, you're a forbidden
>  watcher of the TV."

Yes, and that's what my English said.

Ivan