Subject: Re: [lojban] RE: zi'o and modals

From: Richard Todd <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 19:22:08 -0500

[email-masked] wrote:
> 
> {zi'o} first came to marked attention on this list when somneone
> notice that
> the definition of {botpi} "bottle" involved a content and a cap, which
> a
> bottle by the side of the road typically lacked. So what was that
> bottle?

Ok, (please don't give up on me. I really am trying to get a grip on
this. To me, though, what you guys are saying is not very logical. 
Maybe I'm trying to make these devices--recently with the attitudinals
also--more orthogonal than they really are? At any rate this will be
the last time I beat this horse, I promise)

mi viska le botpi be fo noda
(I see a bottle with unspecified contents, material, and no cap)

Now, this bottle on the road, if we were to investigate it, does
actually have contents (some air, dirt, a bug, and a little water). 
They are not important enough to mention, though. This is a case for
{zo'e}, isn't it?? {zo'e} has a value in this case that can make the
sentence true. I chose to say outright there is no cap, but you could
put that in {zo'e}'s corner as well depending on how important it is to
this sentence. 

Why on earth is a {zi'o} version different or better? Apparently, a
bottle filled with soda and topped with a shiny propeller cap can be
reduced to the {zi'o} version without becoming false. That makes it no
better than {zo'e} for expressing the unimportant parts of this bottle
relationship.

I think I finally understand that {zi'o} means:
``this place could or could not have a truthful value, but I'm not
going to make an assertion about that either way''

(thus the one-way implication from {zo'e} to {zi'o} but not the other
way around). 

Why let {zi'o} and {zo'e} overlap this way? If {zo'e} claims there is a
truthful value, {zi'o} should be saying that there is no truthful
value. That is a clear distinction, without ambiguity.

Then the challenge is coming up for useful way to use {zi'o}, since the
sentences come out kind of zen-like:

mi viska le botpi be zi'o bei le blaci bei zi'o 
(I see a glass bottle which cannot contain anything--including
nothing!--and which is inherently capless) { maybe it's solid glass
that's bottle-shaped? }.

Richard