Currently I lack time for a liguistic analysis of the 1996 rules. However, I disagree with the following.

You say that, in a quadruple ko initially with each non-single-stone string having exactly two breaths, WLOG the white string is said by the rules to have two REAL breaths. You conclude that the string is alive. Before making this conclusion, how can you assess that the breaths are real? ATM I do not have the 1996 booklet in my hands so I do not know if there is a precedental declaration for this quadruple ko. Supposing there is not. Real breaths are not something given a priori because one needs to distinguish them from unreal breaths. We cannot presume "alive" because of vicious circle. The only suitable means is by the possibility of forcing removal presuming some ruleset for constructing sequences. (And not just your one sequence shown.) However, you say that verification [of removal] was ambiguous enough that it can be considered a consistency check. No, it cannot be only a consistency check. It is the necessary means, also to avoid circuluar reasoning. This is so regardless of the specific example and the linguistic demotion in the central rule in its English version from "determined by" to "verified by". I recall that in a text about the 1996 rules (do not recall if it was the booklet or a different Ing pamphlet) the necessity of assessment by removal is described.

Ing '96, Rule 4: Life and Death; Breath types, states:





Requiring life and death to be determined by removal alone, as earlier versions of the Ing rules did, leads to circular reasoning. That is why, I believe, Ing quietly dropped that principle from the '96 rules, whereas it is the first principle of the '91 rules.

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This just shifts the problem from "what is real" to "what is internal".



This is so in Ing rules but it need not be so because one can start with the Default Restriction Rules, hypothetical-sequences, hypothetical-strategies and "force" to derive higher level concepts, such as life, death, ko, internal:

http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/j2003.html
http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/ko.pdf
http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/ko_types.pdf
http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/external.pdf

Of course, this was beyond the capabilities of Ing and the Ing foundation people.

E.g., using the aforementioned techniques, one can first define alive, ko-string and non-ko-string (each string that is not a ko-string) and define: A "real breath" of a non-ko-string is an adjacent breath if the non-ko-string is alive. Similarly, all those other ca. 50 (superfluous) Ing terms can be defined with some more effort.

EDITED.

Indeed.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.