Subject: soi vo'a: partial backflip

From: Nick NICHOLAS <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 16:12:08 -0700 (PDT)

I've had a further think on lenu... soi vo'a, which xod brought up, and
I'm doing a backflip.

It is clear from my survey of Lojban usage that Lojbanists want a
long-distance vo'a. It is also clear that in a couple of contexts, they
want it to be short-distance. Those contexts are (a) when the
long-distance interpretation is nonsense, because the embedded clause is
itself the x1 of the outer bridi (so long-distance vo'a would lead to dumb
recursion); (b) soi vo'a vo'e, where you'd have to be a masochist to want
long-distance. (Robin, in fact, used vo'a twice on the mailing list: once
long-distance --- which is why he was right in the lessons on pointing
out that vo'a is long-distance, when I thought he was wrong; and once in
lenu... soi vo'a --- where he used it short-distance.)

I would prefer vo'a to be unambiguous in all cases; but usage has not, and
will continue to not respect that, and it's better to at least encode
these usage tendencies as conventions. Moreover, the fact that the cmavo
list and the refgramm contradict each other means this is now up in the
air; why not take account of usage in cleaning this up?

So I propose:
* vo'a is by default long-distance

* when context overwhelmingly allows it, it can be short-distance instead

* That context *should* be syntactic rather than semantic (people are
allowed to say semantic nonsense, after all), and the two cases I've
pointed out, as illustrated by {.i lenu mi tavla vo'a cu xamgu}, and {.i
mi jundi lenu la myl. tavla la nyl. soi vo'a}, should be instances of such
contexts.

I will post this on the wiki. I will also change the discussion in the
lessons of vo'a in embedded bridi into a WARNING: DIRTY LAUNDRY
subsection, outlining (briefly!) the various points of view.

For the hardliners, as Jay and And have rightly pointed out, there's
always {lenei} and {leno'a}/{leno'axiro}.

-- 
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Nick Nicholas, Breathing {le'o ko na rivbi fi'inai palci je tolvri danlu}
[email-masked] -- Miguel Cervantes tr. Jorge LLambias