[lojban-beginners] Re: zo zu'i

["Jorge Llambías" <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On 4/23/08, Brett Williams <mungojelly@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> As I understand it, {zo'e} doesn't have to be a typical or expectable
> referent.  It just says that there's some referent which fills the place,
> perhaps a strange one.

{zo'e} is meant to be obvious or irrelevant, for a pure "some"
there's {da}.

> So I wouldn't consider this to be a confusing
> communicaton:
>
> Person A: mi cliva lo dinju ku zo'e
> Person B: cliva fi ma?
> Person A: lo canko
>
> (A: "I left the building by some route."  B: "What route?"  A: "The
> window.")
>
> A window is something that can be a tercliva, so it's not necessarily a
> miscommunication to call it "zo'e".  Indeed, saying "zo'e" when you could
> have as well elided the word or said "zu'i" could be considered a very weak
> implication that there might be something odd about that referent.

An explicit {zo'e} is odd because it draws attention to a place by using
a word that is supposedly meant to be used when you don't want to
draw attention to that place. It sort of defeats its own purpose.
(One exception is when it's required for syntactic reasons, but using
it when it could be left out has an odd effect.)

mu'o mi'e xorxes