Re: jorne 05 Feb 95 00:59:53 EST.) <199502050559.AA08953@access4.digex.net>

[ucleaar <ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk>]

Lojbab:
> >> I still abhor zi'o and would thus never suggest it %~)
> >Is the abhorrence to the notion of creating a new selbri by removing
> >a sumti place of another selbri, or is it to the syntactic device of
> >filling the sumti place by {ziho}, which looks like a sumti?
> The latter.  I still prefer tanru/lujvvo approaches to modifying place
> structures to add or remove places.
> I also tend to think rather more highly of the existing place structures.
> Thus I have trouble conceiving of a fastening without an agent.  When people
> start coming up with specific usage problems, I can then try to resolve them,
> but only a real pattern of such problems will convince me that "zi'o lasna"
> iss even meaningful.

Your description of your objections makes it sound like they are in
fact to the former (deriving new selbri by deleting places), in which
case I don't share your objections. But if they really are to the
actual device of {ziho} to mark deletion of a place, I am inclined
to agree with you. My vague recollections of the debate on {ziho}
(originally, {xo'e}, I distantly recall) were that they focused
on the semantics of deleting places, but not on the syntactic means.
Were a different syntactic device employed, perhaps sumti-place
deletion would be more frequent and found less objectionable.
Personally I would favour 5 cmavo in SE meaning "delete x1/x2/x4/x4/x5",
or something similar that wouldn't require extra cmavo, such that
the deletion of a sumti-place is indicated by modification of the
selbri rather than by filling the deleted place. I think that would
make more apparent the lujvo-creating function of ziho.

Jorge:
> i pe'i au lo me zo zi'o selbri cu selplixau nagi'a dunli
> lo na'e me zo zi'o selbri

Which means {ziho} is never appropriate? A favoured example
when {ziho} was proposed was {klama fo ziho} for teleportation
(which I think is like what jeff Goldblum used in The Fly).
{klama fo ziho} is semantically equivalent to a tanru/lujvo,
in that a new selbri is created.

---
And