TECH: experimental cmavo "xo'e"

["Mark E. Shoulson" <shoulson@CTR.COLUMBIA.EDU>]

>Date:         Tue, 4 May 1993 15:44:13 EDT
>Comments:     Warning -- original Sender: tag was bob@GRACKLE.STOCKBRIDGE.MA.US
>From: bob%GNU.AI.MIT.EDU@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU
>X-To:         lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu, bob@grackle.stockbridge.ma.us

>    > > The Nick/Lojbab experimental cmavo "xo'e", which eradicates a place

>    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?]", ...   English gets away with a
>    passive here, because the passive in English does not commit you
>    to the existence of an agent...

>English does commit you.  A fair portion of English speakers to do
>think that the passive in English commits you to the existence of an
>agent.  There is a semantic ambiguity in the meaning of the word.
>Some people use `is made from' to mean `is composed of' others use it
>to mean `is made by an entity'.

Perhaps a little off-topic, but I note (now that I've been reading Hebrew
grammar books in an attempt to learn intellectually what my tongue already
knows, and to help teach someone the language) that Hebrew uses different
forms for these situations.  The passive verbal mood, the nif`al, usually
implies an agent (ne`esah==was made, presumably by someone), while the
passive participle, the pa`ul, is more stative and doesn't imply an agent
(`asui==just in a state of being/having been made, not necessarily by
anyone) (grammar's less than ideal with this verb, as it's gutteral-initial
and heh-final, which does odd things in conjugation).  Similarly,
"ha-chalon nisgar" means "the window is closed (by someone)", but
"ha-chalon sagur" means "the window is just plain closed".  It may be
significant that the agent-implying nif`al is a full-fledged verbal
construction, whose finite forms all have tense associated, thus indicating
that the action of getting-closed happened at some point, and maybe thus at
someone's hands, while the pa`ul is a time-independent participle, like an
adjective.  Just struck me as interesting...

~mark