[lojban] Re: "zo'e" = ("unimportant","obvious" and ?"unknown")

[John E Clifford <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

The whole zo'e series is so set up as to create a
jnumber of possible misunderstandings.  Even the
clearest, {zu'i}, the typical value, is not so
clear as to be unproblematic, since it inherits
all the obscurities of "typical" (subjective?
communal? objective average?).  And once that is
decided more or less we are still left with the
question of whether the filler is a refereence to
a particular individual or is a general claim
(like "the typical x") about some type of thing
-- though this is usually decidable by context.
Notice that "the usual" is often an attempt to be
informative without saying much (out of
indifference or ignorance or even contempt for
the listener), that is, it downplays the
significance of the holder of the marked place.

In {lo cinfo cu citka zu'i} do we mean that this
is a particular (bunch of) lion(s) eating the
typical stuff -- typical presumably for lions --
or is this a general claim that lions (as a
species, in general) eat the usual (for whom?)
stuff?  


 The perils of {zi'o} are also obvious: using
{zi'o} might appear to mean that nothing fills
that place, i.e., to make a universal negative
claim.  But, it turns out, {zi'o} is only
grammatically a sumti but is semantically a
different sort of predicate modifier, creating a
new predicate -- with one less place -- from the
one overtly presented. To be sure, a sumti also
creates a new predicate with one less place, but
it does so by saying (usually) what goes in that
place in the original. {zi'o} doesn't say what
goes in that place -- even that something or
nothing does (other things regular sumti -- {da}
and {noda} -- do); it simply removes that place
from consideration. Questions of what -- if
anything - goes there are simply not relevant,
any more that questions about what is to go into
the third place of {bacru}.

{zo'e} fits into this pattern of downplaying
whatever goes into a certain place.  It is more
generousd than {zi'o}, for it allows -- even
insists that something does go there, while still
denying that the question what that something is
is a sensible one to ask at this point. Thus, it
is less generous than {da} in this place, since
{da} allows (even invites) the question "Which
one?" and {zo'e} says that that is not a question
to be entertained at the moment. To be sure,
saying that the question is not to be entertained
seems to arise from two quite different
considerations, both of which get some support in
CLL as the meaning of {zo'e}, and the word lists
add a third reading. The idea is that identifying
the occupant of the place is a waste of time,
either because everybody all ready knows who it
is or because who it is  does not make any
difference in the current situation.  The word
list reading (with a small clarification)is
perhaps the safest    : placeholder unspecified 
and questions about who it is dismissed as a
waste of time.  (A thorough pragmatic analysis
would suggest that in the case where we do not
know who it is, {da} is better, even if asking
the speaker would be a waste of time, since he
doesn't know the answer.)