Message-Id: <m0rF7Ei-00007GC@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Tue, 6 Dec 1994 20:50:01 +0000
Reply-To:     ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Sender:       Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@FINHUTC.hut.fi>
From:         ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Subject:      Re: Subject: Re: TEXT: pemci
To:           Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
In-Reply-To:  (Your message of Mon, 05 Dec 94 18:57:06 EST.)
Content-Length: 1148
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Jorge:
> At the risk of invoking the ire of the gods, I will say that in my
> opinion Lojban does distinguish between singular and plural, albeit
> not exactly like English.
> That is the basic distinction between {le} and {lei}. (Also between
> lo and loi, but it is easier to see it in the specific case.)
> Of course, having a sort of plural doesn't make Lojban any more
> English-like than if it didn't have it, and if people don't like
> calling this a plural I don't mind, but I think it is.

Since the collective/distributive distinction only makes sense for
categories with >1 member, and since we seem to feel that lVi is
more 'marked' than lV, it is true that lVi pragmatically implies
plurality. But this is not a grammatical number distinction, of
course, and it doesn't apply to distributives: lV does not pragmatically
imply singularity [interestingly, I think we tend to assume in the
absence of contextual clues to the contrary that lV is referring
to a single entity (at least I do). I have no idea whether this is
my English bias or whether speakers of languages without obligatory
number distinction would do the same].

---
And