se marji works for most cases of defining what something is made of. But if you are looking (as your latter examples) of stuff that are wholly comprised of components, and you don't want to use zilzba, you can aslo use mulselpau.
--gejyspa
On Wed, Nov 9, 2011 at 3:58 PM, H. Felton
<lojban707@fagricipni.com> wrote:
In some senses, I have been "out of circulation" for 10 to 15
years; so some things may have changed. 15 years ago, it was
thought that "dark matter" made up at least 90% of the
universe's mass; so I chose "slabu" over "fadni" in this case.
I am also not including matter (trans)formed in expensive
physics labs nor the nuclei/free electron plasma of active
stars as "slabu" (familiar) matter to human beings. Thus, I
*am* intending to say that all familiar matter is composed of
atoms. Perhaps I should use a "lo'i" after all: "ro lo'i ro
slabu marji ku gunma lo ratni".
Regarding the question of using the second place of "marji",
I have decided that that is not enough to cover the types of
"made of" that I have in mind; "a line is made of (composed of)
points" or "a Fraction Object is made of (composed of) two
Integer Objects" -- a programming example --; neither of these
is regarded as being made of *matter* at all, but both fall
within the concept of "made of" or "composed of" as I believe
it needs to be defined. "gunma" appears to be the best *gismu*
for the job, though I wouldn't object to a lujvo being used for
the job.