[lojban] Re: Let's move {soi} to JOI. And why can't places be interconnected in lojban predicates?

[djandus <jandew@gmail.com>]

Whenever I first learned {soi}, I had a similar thought, but slightly different. It's not to take SOI and make it JOI, because that's basically completely undesired. Instead, it would say:

Use SOI like JOI between sumti, but only between sumti. (SOI thus allows {ku} elision) SOI, like JOI, is allowed to make a SOI series. ({ko'a soi ko'e soi ko'i} is allowed.) SOI asserts that all sumti in the series can be swapped in any order without changing the validity of the overall bridi. Otherwise, you can remove all SOI (and insert the possibly elided {ku} where necessary) and parse the bridi exactly. (So every sumti still falls into the place structure as if SOI wasn't there, except that the components of the series can be swapped and replaced in any order.)

The benefit is that

mi prami do soi vo'a vo'e

is shortened to

mi soi do prami

And even more beneficial are longer statements, such as

mi bevri lo tanxe ku ti soi tu ca'o bi cacra ca lo cabdei

"I carried boxes there and back for eight hours today."

(In the current system, the placement of {soi} is rather annoying as well, as it kind of... sucks, no matter where you put it.)

The main reason I had for the idea was that Lojban goes through so much effort to allow any place structure order that it is always the case that {soi} could be between the necessary sumti, with proper rearranging. Secondarily, it allows the extension of "vice-versa" to include multiple items. (The current SOI uses the restriction of requiring exactly two items to help with VOhA elision.)

However, this type of change sorely disagrees with current usage, so a new word would be more proper than a replacement.

On a complete side note, I also dislike the current SOI process as it feels like it was created with lame reasons behind it. I get the feeling that somebody came up with VOhA for reflexives and somebody didn't like that a whole series of words was being created for one purpose. That, or maybe somebody liked that {vo'a vo'e} parallels "vice-versa" phonetically. Both of which are pretty lame reasons to not think of a better way of doing things.

And on a final side note, I would also like to mention that the reciprocity should be able to be expressed without filling the places, as in the current:

{mi prami soi vo'a vo'e} for "I love something (and it loves me)"

The way I would do that with my proposal would be:

{mi soi vo'e prami}, where vo'e fills the place it represents.

(Once again, if anyone actually likes this proposal, we would need a word other than {soi} to use.)

mu'o mi'e djos

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