Saddam Hussein modifies

[cbmvax!uunet!mullian.ee.mu.OZ.AU!nsn]

Art Protin has come up with some wild claims in his time (like the one that
his kids would become pariahs if the distinction between individuals and
masses was not made), and la nitcion., with his Icon of Kalman Kalocsay
haning off his broad shoulder, goes on the attack over his rejection of
the uncleft place structure for {galfi}. As you all know, right now
the structure of the predicate is: x1: the modifying agent, x2: the modified,
x3: the modifying event. lojbab saith that the agent of x3 is x1, so x1
is superfluous. Not so, saith Art, and raises a SapirWhorf alert. I, as
is known, do not care much about Sapir Whorf, but do care for a lojban that
is without millions of place structures. Lojbab's constraint on the agent
is not a constraint on thought, it is a definition. The concept of to
modify is a causal one, and the definition is that the guy who acts the
action which modifies is the guy who does the modifying itself. If Art
wants to speak nonsense (oh, the Iraqi soldiers did the modifying action,
only Saddam did the modifying), he can with the cleft structure, because
{fi'o gasnu} exists: he can specify an agent in an action that's quite
distinct from the x1 place. But this is nonsense, and his sample phrase

I modify the borders of Kuwait by your invading them

by itself is meaningless, because there is no cause & effect implicit
in the soldier's invasion (he might as well have said:

I modify the borders of Kuwait by the Sheik's shifty deals)

Saddam IS doing SOMETHING to bring about the change of borders; if the soldiers
invaded Kuwait unbidden, or indeed despite him, Art's statement would be
invalid, as saddam would have had nothing to do with the modifying. The
above statement should read

I modifying the borders of Kuwait by having you invade them.

Art's phrase is an ellipsis, and confuses the issue.