TECH: SEI vs. TO

["Mark E. Shoulson" <shoulson@CTR.COLUMBIA.EDU>]

Well, by its very grammatical limitations, sei/se'u is not well-suited to
all cases of editorial additions or emendations.  If the quoted material
has grammatical errors, the best you can do is supply words to fix it
(inluding eraser-words, though that gets more complex), flagging them with
{sa'a}.  This is also true for constructions like {tosa'a li'o toi}, as in
Nick's Wallops, where he uses that construction for his notes.

As to paraphrases, like in English, sei/se'u also fails in many situations.
To wit: "He [Bob] didn't like the idea".  Since this sort of explication
consist only of a term, not a bridi, sei/se'u can't help, while something
like {goisa'a la bab.} *might* be okay, or {tosa'a ri du la bab.}.... Hmm,
or for that matter, {sei ri la bab. du}.  So I guess it can be used...

I consider sei/se'u to be sort of a way to convert a bridi into something
equivalent to a UI.  Thus, you could use it to mean Nick's proposed "[sic]
UI" (which I still think should exist in its own right: it's useful) by
simply coming up with a bridi which indicates what you want (I leave that
as an exercise for the reader).  "Drop-out quotes" seem to be a good usage
as well, as lojbab points out.

~mark