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

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2001 17:37:54 EDT

In a message dated 6/12/2001 2:24:32 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> So why don't we just change the meaning of 'botpi' so that it only has three
> places and none for a cap? Then we could have a gismu that means cap (If we
> don't already) and then say 'ti botpi .i ta cu [cap] ti' to say this is a
> bottle and that is its cap, and the botpi relationship would make sense.
> 

You have asked the impossible question. We don't change now because we are 
in freeze-land, wherein no changes are to be made unless catastrophe looms 
(i.e., the parser finds an ambiguity). As to why things got set up the way 
they did, why {botpi} has four places, but {tansi} three and {vasru} two, one 
can only point to history and the warped pyches of the devisers -- including 
what they happened to be thinking about at the moment they got to that word 
in the list. Indeed, why that word is on the list but some other is not is 
also lost in mists of prehistory (I have not been able to find any notes from 
1955 or 6, when this was starting up) -- though Eaton and Basic English 
reputedly played significant roles. But we would have problems of some sort 
with any list; learn to live with this one.