Subject: re: the zi'o joke

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2000 19:53:50 EDT

taral:
<<pc:
>. However, that same bottle may be a botpi 
> zi'o (or botpi zi'o fo zi'o, since it probably doesn't have a cap either). 

Interesting... would the "ellipsis" of zo'e apply to a missing "zi'o"?
e.g. saying "botpi zi'o" when you mean "botpi zi'o fo zi'o"? (Since a
bottle may or may not have a lid...)>>

No, you can't elide the "zi'o" any more than you can the "se" and
expect things to come out right. Although, as thing are now, of
course, the unmarked places are effectively equivalent to "zo'e"
anyhow. But in the system (oops! I've just noticed that I am
confusing two states of the language here -- that is not marking
which one I am talking about) that I took to underlie maikl's joke
(I'm not sure any more that it did -- or, indeed, that he was joking),
things might get into a class with a lot of <bottle, material for
bottle> even though they noworld had content of bottle nor cap to
bottle, but were bottlous in some other way (the "duck" definition
say).