From cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!LOJBAN Thu Jan 16 15:29:16 1992 Return-Path: Message-Id: <9201161944.AA02133@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> Date: Thu, 16 Jan 1992 14:32:42 EST Reply-To: "Mark E. Shoulson" Sender: Lojban list From: "Mark E. Shoulson" Subject: The dreaded word "only" X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann In-Reply-To: John Cowan's message of Thu, 16 Jan 1992 12:15:19 EST Status: RO Date: Thu, 16 Jan 1992 12:15:19 EST From: John Cowan X-To: Lojban List > .i la alex. romei lei cevni Here I disagree on two counts, one minor, one fundamental. The minor point is that "ro cevni" means "ro lo cevni", and therefore the mass form must be "loi cevni", not "lei cevni". Fine. details. But even making this change, la alex. romei loi cevni still seems to me to mean: That-named "Allah" is-an-allsome-of the-mass-of gods In other words, there are one or more gods, and "Allah" is a collective name for all of them taken as a mass. Remember that "la alex." is not marked for number! I think I have to side with Nick here. The sentence means "Allah is all the god(s)". This is essentially what we want said. The fact that Allah is singular is no more apparent from the Lojban than it is from the English; we rely (in *both* languages) on the listener to have some perception of what Allah is considered to be. You have to specify that there's only one Allah separately, just as you'd have to in English (tho the number-marking in English would minimize this to some extent, but not entirely). The problem you see here, I think, lieth not within the predication "romei", but within the massification "loi". When you massify like this (and I note that Lojbanic massification is still somewhat mysterious to me), you (sometimes?) imply an entity of the mass, which may be distinct from the members, thus leading to the interpretation that "Allah is the name given to the god(s) taken all together", which is what's bugging you. Maybe the magic "lu'a" (convert to individuals) cmavo can do something: la .alex. cu romei lu'a loi cevni Allah is-an-allsome-of the-members-comprising the-mass-of-things-that-are god(s) Oog. That looks even worse. Maybe a better perception of massification would help me out here. ~mark