[lojban] The place structure of {selma'o}

[Daniel Brockman <dbrockman@gmail.com>]

The term "selma'o" (in both English and Lojban) actually has very little to do
with cmavo.  It's used for any word, and we have selma'o like CMENE and BRIVLA.

Remarkably, {selma'o} doesn't even have a proper definition in jbovlaste.
I propose the following place structure:

    selma'o: x1=c2 is the grammatical class of the word x2=c1
    with role x3=c3 in language x4=c4.

Note that I have dropped the reference to cmavo, and adapted the meaning
of the x3 to be the role of the selma'o rather than the meaning of the word.

I like this for several reasons, the biggest one of course being that it
causes the word {selma'o} to make sense and be useful and intuitive.

I also like the fact that this definition makes {selma'o} != {se cmavo} (though
they would still share their x1s).  This sets a precedent that should
discourage people from creating nonce lujvo with -sel- that are completely
superflous to the {se} compound, which is just a bad habit anyway in a
language that is supposed to be inflectionless.

(Are there any precedents for {selbroda} != {se broda} already?)

An interesting expression is {lo se selma'o be zo ui}, by the way, which with
this definition would be a precise way to say "the words of selma'o UI".
(Right now, this is usually expressed using {la'e}: {lo cmavo be la'e zo ui}.)

Thoughts?

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