TECH: living things are made of ...

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@GREBYN.COM>]

This translation problem has come up many times before; the best discussion
came out of Nick's translation of the Adventure game.  "are made of" should
NOT use zbasu; the semantics here is clearly "are composed of", which is
"tarmi" or possibly "marji" if I recall us changing the place structure
correctly (no gismu list handy), or at the very least "ckaji".  I agree
with Colin that the use of "zbasu" implies a "maker", and that is why I
tend to agree with Nick that "ne'e" is primarily of pedagogical use.

However the original arguments that led to "ne'e" were the ones that Bruce
Gilson raised (and which were incorporated in his short-lived Voksigid
conlang effort), which is that the use of "ne'e" did indeed give a "different
selbri" without the indicated place.  I didn't like it then, and don't like
it now, but presumed that Nick had been 'converted' by that discussion which
is why he had used it in his place structure paper.

Since Nick has done the bulk of the place structure work that will appear in
the first dictionary, I am bound by necessity to defer to him on the use of
a cmavo in analyzing place structures.  If, as he says, the usage is only
pedagogical, probably the better approach is to NOT add the cmavo to the
language and NOT use it in the place structure paper, but instead use a
different pedagogical method to explain what is happening when you eliminate
a place. My argument in suggesting it be assigned a cmavo was merely that if
it was going to be codified into the language by appearing in one of the
defining papers (even if only pedagogical), it should be assigned a real
cmavo, and not something from experimental cmavo space, since by definition
it is "real" and not "experimental" if it is used as an example (i.e. there
will be people that will emulate any usage that appears in the papers).

Thus I withdraw my support for this cmavo, and suggest that the rewriting
of that section of the paper is a better approach.

lojbab