On Tue, 30 Sep 2008, ais523 wrote: > On Tue, 2008-09-30 at 11:53 -0400, Geoffrey Spear wrote: >> On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 10:58 AM, comex <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> we wouldn't say that he had >>> gained the privilege of driving his car; nor would we in the more >>> bizarre situation that he became allowed to do it but remained unable >>> to. >> >> What if the teenager got eir driver's license by couldn't find eir >> keys. E'd have the privilege of driving eir car (e MAY drive it), but >> not the mechanism for doing so (e CANNOT drive it as it won't start). >> >> Of course, R2148 says a foreign nomic "may" grant powers and >> privileges. It doesn't provide a mechanism for granting them, so >> precedent indicates that no such machanism can be assumed to exist. > > Surely the foreign nomic provides the mechanism? Lowercase "may" seems > to have a special place in the rules, used in all sorts of strange > places; maybe it needs a definition of its own.
Lowercase 'may' is covered in MMI, it SHOULD be treated as MAY unless it shouldn't be. That was so we didn't have to go through and figure out for each and every instance of the common word what was meant. -Goethe
