From lojbab@xxxxxx.xxxx Sat Apr 24 01:25:19 1999 X-Digest-Num: 122 Message-ID: <44114.122.703.959273824@eGroups.com> Date: Sat, 24 Apr 1999 04:25:19 -0400 From: Bob LeChevalier-Logical Language Group From: Colin Fine >vecu'u le notci po'u <01be8b8d$85f30b20$LocalHost@jorge> la "=?us- >ascii?Q?Jorge_J._Llamb=EDas?=" cu cusku di'e >> >>This brings me to a recent comment by Colin about the meaning >>of Michael's {pa lei karce}, which was intended to mean "one of >>the cars" and Colin took it to mean "the one mass of cars". I tend >>to prefer the first meaning because it is so much more useful and >>cannot, as far as I can tell, cause any ambiguity. But why was pa le karce not used? That would just as easily mean "one of the cars", and there is NO known problems with it. Why introduce problems by trying for a nonstandard interpretation of the mass descriptor? >> I would tend to >>interpret a quantifier of individuals (pa, re, ci, su'o, ro, so'i, etc) as >>itself converting from mass to individual bypassing the need to >>use {lu'a}. (Of course pisu'o, piro, piso'i, etc still work for masses.) >>If that is acceptable, then in this case we could also say: >>{e'u ro ma'a tugni}. Another example (used by several people) is >>{coi ro do}, "Hello to each of you". If not interpreted like this, {ro} >>is pretty meaningless there since there is only one "mass you". "do" is indeterminate whether it is a mass or individuals, per Chap 6 section 13 of the book. >I like this suggestion (which I hadn't thought of). But I'm not entirely >sure it works in general. I think that it plain does not work specifically for "lei". "lei broda" need not be a massification of a plural set; it is a single mass, and the components are of unknown cardinality. On the other hand, with "lei" unlike "loi" there could be a plural number of masses. With 10 people, I think you could have "mu lei re prenu". lojbab ---- lojbab ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS*** lojbab@lojban.org Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ " Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.