[lojban] selbri fa place and gadri question

[Luke Bergen <lukeabergen@gmail.com>]

I have two questions.  The first is: why MUST the x1 place (un-marked with se/fa) always be to the left of the selbri?  What was the design decision that leads {nelci mi do} to mean "someone (unspecified) likes me having something to do with you" instead of the seemingly obvious "like, I do you" -> "I like you".

My second question came about when I was trying to think of how one might word my first question in lojban.  I quickly realized that I needed a gadri that gets at the defining form of a word.  So I wanted to say {ma lo krinu lo nu __ selbri cu se smuni ...} where the "__" is some gadri which means "that x which defines what is a(n) x".  So maybe another way to think about it would be, how would you say "lions are animals".  Am I saying "the typical"?  Not really, because all lions by definition are animals.  It's not quite {ro da} either because I'm not talking about "all lions" but about "that quintessential lion (theoretical) which defines how lion-y a real world thing is".

 - pafcribe