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I think the clearest way to understand zi'o (ordinary sumti use) is to look at the differences between two English sentences: The joke was translated poorly. In this case, it makes sense to ask "By whom?" and therefore the right way to say this in Lojban is "Zo'e translated the joke poorly." But in The joke translated poorly. it makes no sense, or misses the point, to ask "By whom?" The notion of a translator is not merely unexpressed, but actually removed from the sentence. The Lojban way of saying this, therefore, is "Zi'o translated the joke poorly." This does not mean, of course, that there was no translator at all! The effect of "zi'o" is to remove a place from the relationship being stated, *not* in general (though it may be so in some specific cases) to say that nothing could possibly occupy that place. -- He made the Legislature meet at one-horse John Cowan tank-towns out in the alfalfa belt, so that jcowan@hidden.email hardly nobody could get there and most of http://www.reutershealth.com the leaders would stay home and let him go http://www.ccil.org/~cowan to work and do things as he pleased. --Mencken, _Declaration of Independence_