From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Tue Jul 11 13:20:42 2006 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Tue, 11 Jul 2006 13:20:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1G0OiV-0000ZJ-4W for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Tue, 11 Jul 2006 13:20:23 -0700 Received: from web56411.mail.re3.yahoo.com ([216.252.111.90]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with smtp (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1G0OiS-0000ZA-Pk for lojban-list@lojban.org; Tue, 11 Jul 2006 13:20:22 -0700 Received: (qmail 94624 invoked by uid 60001); 11 Jul 2006 20:20:19 -0000 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=yahoo.com; h=Message-ID:Received:Date:From:Subject:To:In-Reply-To:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding; b=Vwd9qQaSNgHSiG31u/8vfv0BSRjAI7V+o0hZJ0hFxhP1ah9CJIaIMA989ayDY17apTCksySHoRmVge27qxpujBl3tAHfyDz7ciDKM7rgjFZBXICFK0tyELwxVPv6M0VWCfp0jQxqCmWjyvdqdlZiVhIJXm4R2Q1qW7/S7XvwugI= ; Message-ID: <20060711202019.94622.qmail@web56411.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Received: from [75.2.89.1] by web56411.mail.re3.yahoo.com via HTTP; Tue, 11 Jul 2006 13:20:19 PDT Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 13:20:19 -0700 (PDT) From: Nathaniel Krause Subject: [lojban] Re: A (rather long) discussion of {all} To: lojban-list@lojban.org In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="0-1258496468-1152649219=:88098" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Spam-Score: -0.5 (/) X-archive-position: 12109 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: nathanielkrause@yahoo.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list --0-1258496468-1152649219=:88098 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Maxim Katcharov wrote:When I first started learning Lojban, I found the translation of English plurals strange. {su'o re la gerku} seemed like an unintuitive and deficient translation of "the dogs" - is that really the only reason we have plurals? was the distinction between numerical 1 and all those numbers greater than 1 - was this distinction by itself important enough to have such a great effect on language? I didn't think much of it at the time, but looking back now I find that this corresponds to my position. It is my understanding that the large difference between 1 and >1 stems from how our minds treat single entities vs single entities composed of many entities."su'o re la gerku" is about as good a translation of "the dogs" as anything you'd find in Chinese. That is, it's certainly possible to have a functioning language that ignores the difference between 1 and >1. Interestingly, Chinese does have a plural, but it can only be used to describe people. -Nat Krause __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com --0-1258496468-1152649219=:88098 Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:
When I first started
learning Lojban, I found the translation of English plurals strange.
{su'o re la gerku} seemed like an unintuitive and deficient
translation of "the dogs" - is that really the only reason we have
plurals? was the distinction between numerical 1 and all those numbers
greater than 1 - was this distinction by itself important enough to
have such a great effect on language? I didn't think much of it at the
time, but looking back now I find that this corresponds to my
position. It is my understanding that the large difference between 1
and >1 stems from how our minds treat single entities vs single
entities composed of many entities.
"su'o re la gerku" is about as good a translation of "the dogs" as anything you'd find in Chinese. That is, it's certainly possible to have a functioning language that ignores the difference between 1 and >1.

Interestingly, Chinese does have a plural, but it can only be used to describe people.

-Nat Krause

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