6. Dependent places

The rule for eliminating places from a lujvo is that dependent places provided by the seltau are eliminated. Therefore, in ``gerzda'' the dependent g2 place is removed from the tentative place structure given in Example 3.5, leaving the place structure:

6.1)  z1 is the house dwelt in by dog z2=g1

Informally put, the reason this has happened --- and it happens a lot with seltau places --- is that the third place was describing not the doghouse, but the dog who lives in it. The sentence

6.2)  la mon. rePOS. gerzda la spat.
    Mon Repos is a doghouse of Spot.

6.3)  la mon. rePOS. zdani la spat. noi gerku
    Mon Repos is a house of Spot, who is a dog.

6.4)  la mon. rePOS. zdani la spat noi ke'a gerku zo'e
    Mon Repos is a house of Spot, who is a dog
        of unspecified breed.

Specifically,

6.5)  la mon. rePOS. zdani la spat.
        noi ke'a gerku la sankt. berNARD.
    Mon Repos is a house of Spot,
        who is a dog of breed St. Bernard.

6.6)  la mon. rePOS. gerzda la spat.
        noi ke'a gerku la sankt. berNARD. ku'o
        la sankt. berNARD.
    Mon Repos is a doghouse of Spot,
        who is a dog of breed St. Bernard,
        of breed St. Bernard.

As a further example, take ``cakcinki'', the lujvo for ``beetle'', based on the tanru ``calku cinki'', or ``shell-insect''. The gismu place structures are:

6.7)  ``calku'': ca1 is a shell/husk around ca2 made of ca3
    ``cinki'': ci1 is an insect/arthropod of species ci2

6.8)  ci1=ca2 is a beetle of species ci2

(Note that there is nothing in this explanation that tells us just why ``cakcinki'' means ``beetle'' (member of Coleoptera), since all insects in their adult forms have chitin shells of some sort. The answer, which is in no way predictable, is that the shell is a prominent, highly noticeable feature of beetles in particular.)

What about the dependency of ci2 on ci1? After all, no beetle belongs to more than one species, so it would seem that the ci2 place of ``cakcinki'' could be eliminated on the same reasoning that allowed us to eliminate the g2 place of ``gerzda'' above. However, it is a rule that dependent places are not eliminated from a lujvo when they are derived from the tertau of its veljvo. This rule is imposed to keep the place structures of lujvo from drifting too far from the tertau place structure; if a place is necessary in the tertau, it's treated as necessary in the lujvo as well.

In general, the desire to remove places coming from the tertau is a sign that the veljvo selected is simply wrong. Different place structures imply different concepts, and the lujvo maker may be trying to shoehorn the wrong concept into the place structure of his or her choosing. This is obvious when someone tries to shoe-horn a ``klama'' tertau into a ``litru'' or ``cliva'' concept, for example: these gismu differ in their number of arguments, and suppressing places of ``klama'' in a lujvo doesn't make any sense if the resulting modified place structure is that of ``litru'' or ``cliva''.

Sometimes the dependency is between a single place of the tertau and the whole event described by the seltau. Such cases are discussed further in Section 13.

Unfortunately, not all dependent places in the seltau can be safely removed: some of them are necessary to interpreting the lujvo's meaning in context. It doesn't matter much to a doghouse what breed of dog inhabits it, but it can make quite a lot of difference to the construction of a school building what kind of school is in it! Music schools need auditoriums and recital rooms, elementary schools need playgrounds, and so on: therefore, the place structure of ``kuldi'u'' (from ``ckule dinju'', and meaning ``school building'') needs to be

6.9)  d1 is a building housing school c1
        teaching subject c3 to audience c4