TECH: zi'o: never decided formally

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

I have noticed that the status of zi'o is not officially decided.
Actually there are two issues.  Adding the cmavo, and giving it a rafsi.
The latter is a baseline change now and has a higher standard for
approval.  Because there was no official decision, zi'o did not make it
into the gismu list that I posted last week (zi'o isn't a gismu, but all
cmavo with rafsi are included in that list as well).

Richard Kennaway wrote last month:
>For zi'o to mean anything like what it is intended to mean, we must
>consider the relationship denoted by a brivla to have some sort of
>internal structure, to be made up of various components in some way.
>Only then can omitting the destination place of klama leave some sort of
>relationship among the remaining arguments other than the mere denial
>that they are related by klama to any destination.  What that
>relationship is would have to be part of the definition of each gismu,
>covering every way of zi'o-ing a subset of the places, or at least every
>meaningful way.  But which ways are meaningful?  How does one set about
>deciding whether it is meaningful to zi'o, say, the first place of
>klama?  Or all five?
>
>It seems to me that if a place can be sensibly zi'o-ed, it doesn't
>belong in the definition at all.

Nora basically agrees with you, and I am more-or-less convinced.  It
also sounds like this is more or less the consensus of those who
commented afterwards.

Nora's opinion is that zi'o per se does not logically belong in the
language for reasons similar to those you stated.  However it does
belong effectively in the rafsi set, as a means to conventionally define
new 'metaphorical' lujvo which have omitted a sumti from the
relationship.  Exactly what it means to omit a particular sumti is, as
you describe, somewhat difficult to determine in any degree of
formality.  The key point is that a predicate with a zi'o place is a
totally different predicate from the predicate with the place normally
there.  Inferences between such predicates are problematical at best.

Cowan then said later, after several exchanges]
>P(a,b,c,d,zi'o) is a four-place
>predicate, such that P(a,b,c,d,e) implies P(a,b,c,d,zi'o), but not vice
                                   ^^^^^^^
>versa.  We can infer from "mi klama le zarci" that "mi klama le zarci
>zi'o zi'o zi'o", but the relationships are not the same:  the first case
>asserts "I go to the store from somewhere with-route something
>with-means something" whereas the second asserts "I go to the store",
>period.  I do >not< assert the existence of origin, route, or
>destination -- which is not the same as denying they exist.

whereas Nora assertion is that "implies" is too strong, because the
proper notation should be P(a,b,c,d,e) and P'(a,b,c,d,zi'o)
                                            ^

This would suggest that zi'o should be covered in Nick's lujvo-making
paper, if it is not already, in more detail than in any other paper
Cowan is writing, since I would define zi'o in all its grammatical glory
as a cmavo as a back-formation from the lujvo-making technique, with the
semantics of a lujvo.  Thus, while it has the grammar of KOhA, it is
really more akin to "zei", the lujvo-linking cmavo.

My opinion, therefore, is that there is sufficient consensus to add the
zi'o artifact as a rafsi (which I think should come after a number if
using a numerical convention to say what is deleted, since this leads to
minimal hyphenation).  I am not convinced that there is a consensus
regarding the cmavo itself, but we have no rafsi in the language that do
not map to a non-rafsi form, so this alone may be reason to add the
word.

lojbab