[Avodah] tannaitic transmission?

[Rich, Joel via Avodah]

The gemara in makot (15b-top) has an exchange between R'Yochanan and a Tanna (whose job it was to memorize tannaitic material) concerning the memorized text (bitlo vs. kiymo). R'Yochanan questions the use of one term in the reisha and the other term in the seifa based on the fact that using the two terms in this manner leaves the law in an in-between case, (lo kiymo but lo bitlo)unclear, and therefore tells him to teach it in the future with the same term.
 I was thinking of two ways of looking at this. On one level, it could be simply a transmission error that R'Yochanan was looking to fix. Yet we see cases where an intermediate case is indeterminate and the gemara simply concludes that we can't determine the halacha from this source.
 My other thought was that the tanna's transmission was true and it reflected the earlier generation's surety concerning the halacha in the endpoint cases, but lack of surety with the halacha in the in-between case and thus they recorded the agreed upon halachot and left the middle case unadjudicated. Perhaps R'Yochanan was saying it was time to finalize the adjudication according to his opinion. Thoughts?
KT
Joel Rich

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