Re: TECH: grammar updates

[John Cowan <cowan@SNARK.THYRSUS.COM>]

la kolin. cusku di'e

> > This pops up for me when I want to say something universal, but where the
> > natural gismu seems to want an agent:  "Living things are made from cells
> > [by whom?]", "Set A can be divided into sets B and [jo'u] C [who does the
> > dividing?]", etc.  English gets away with a passive here, because the
 passive
> > in English does not commit you to the existence of an agent; not so SE
> > conversion, which does not eliminate any places.  Without this gimmick,
> > the only way to eliminate places is to make a lujvo and just say "This
> > obnoxious place doesn't exist in this lujvo".  But (as Nick rightly
> > points out) there then needs to be a way to re-express the meaning of the
> > lujvo in terms of a tanru.
>
> This is dangerous, because it lets malglico in by the back door. 'zbasu' has
> a maker in its tergismu for good reason. If you don't happen to believe that
> living things have a zbasu in their history, then it is not appropriate to
> use 'zbasu'. The argument that 'ne'e zbasu' is a different selbri reeks of
> sophistry, and looks to me like a way of avoiding thinking about what you
> really mean.

Probably true.  However, I await your lujvo for "battery", as per Nick's
concerns: a battery is a {sorcu}, but doesn't need a location; it is a
{sorcu be fo ne'e}.

BTW, I just noticed that an alternative to {ne'e} for this use would be {zi'a},
{zi'i}, {zi'o}, or {zi'u}, all recently freed with the abolition of ziheks.
These would have the advantage of sharing an initial letter with {zo'e} and
{zu'i}.  Comments?

--
John Cowan      cowan@snark.thyrsus.com         ...!uunet!lock60!snark!cowan
                        e'osai ko sarji la lojban.