Proto-judgement for CFJ 3781:
In the R478 text:
> Where the rules define an action that CAN be performed "by
> announcement", a person performs that action by unambiguously and
> clearly specifying the action and announcing that e performs it.
The word "define" indicates that it is a definition, and the quotes
around the term "by announcement" indicate that this is the term being
defined.
The problem with this definitional text is that the grammatical constructs
are mixed. The first part is in passive voice ("CAN be performed") while
the second part is in active voice ("a person performs"). This is a
grammatical error and should be fixed, either by making both active or
both passive (either would be fine and match the intent of this clause).
However, until it is fixed, how can we parse the text? In particular, the
caller assets that this error is substantive and maps the subject of the
second clause ("a person", by which the caller means "any person") onto
any use of the term being defined ("by announcement"), even if an actual
use case specifies a more limited set of subjects (i.e. a more limited set
of persons who CAN perform the action).
While linguistic definitions should not be treated as strict string
replacements (and must take into account context, grammar, etc.), it is
useful to use a string-replacement approach to see if this works.
The simplest use case of the definition might be:
> Person A CAN do X by announcement.
The caller's arguments assert that the portion of the definition "a person
performs" is part of that definition, and furthermore, that "a person"
refers to "any person". So let's try that substitution for "by
announcement" in the simple example:
> Person A CAN do X by any person unambiguously and clearly specifying the
> action and announcing that e performs it.
Using this substitution method, we have a grammatical problem: two
subjects (Person A and any person). This makes, for example, the "e"
ambiguous in terms of who is announced to be performing it. Also note
that we had to mung the definition by shifting the "by" in "by
unambiguously" to be in front of "any person". More importantly, it makes
a sentence that is self-contradictory in terms of the causal agent (and we
care about identifying causal agents in Agora) - is it Person A who CAN do
it, or any person who announces it?
So overall, this substitution requires more text manipulation, reads
incorrectly in terms of grammar, and leaves things broken and ambiguous in
terms of who is performing the action.
However, we can use the grammatical cues in the definition to line up the
substitution in a different way, in particular, lining up the "by" in "by
announcement" with the "by" in "by unambiguously". Under this
interpretation, we get:
> Person A CAN do X by unambiguously and clearly specifying the
> action and announcing that e performs it.
This is grammatically clear, requires no text manipulation within the
definition, and matches the fairly clear intent. Therefore, it is
preferred as an operational way to interpret the broken grammar in the
definition, until the grammar is fixed.
Note that this interpretation doesn't ignore or discard the "a person
performs that action by" part of the definition as an inconvenience, it
simply treats it as a synonym for the passive phrasing "that action is
performed by" that matches the first part of the definition.
The result, of course, is that the definition on its own describes how a
person explicitly ENABLED to do X by announcement (e.g. transferring a
coin) goes about doing so, and it does not add any other persons to those
who are explicitly ENABLED. I find FALSE.
