From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Thu Sep 9 04:29:23 1993 Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Thu, 9 Sep 1993 04:29:23 -0400 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Thu, 9 Sep 1993 04:29:18 -0400 Message-Id: <199309090829.AA24484@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 1647; Thu, 09 Sep 93 04:27:41 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 8436; Thu, 09 Sep 93 04:30:45 EDT Date: Thu, 9 Sep 1993 09:26:40 BST Reply-To: I.Alexander.bra0125@oasis.icl.co.uk Sender: Lojban list From: Iain Alexander Subject: Re: TECH: TANSTAAFL X-To: lojbab@grebyn.com X-Cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch Status: RO X-Status: la lojbab. cusku di'e > I owuld say "free" is "no jdini", which does not mention money units. > If the normal place value is a money unit, though, using "li" is working at > a different abstraction level, and seems inconsistent semantically. > The price is not the quantity "0" because we don't mat for goods with > quantities, but rather with quantities OF something. Hang on - I've just realised what you suggested. My point was that noda jdima ko'a doesn't mean the price is zero, it means there is no such price. no jdini cu jdima ko'a merely restricts that to a monetary price - there is no amount of money which is the price (although there might be some other kind of price). Similarly re jdini cu jdima ko'a or reda jdima ko'a would mean there are two (presumably different) prices. What we need is one of the "measure" gismu, which have a place for a _number_. Perhaps the simplest is {klani}. noda se jdima be lo se klani be li no je mijdorsai (using the klani lai quantity x1 (quantifier) is a quantity/amount of x2 (measured property/object count) on scale x3 (si'o) 3b 31 (count) definition of {klani} - not sure if it's changed now). co'o mi'e .i,n.