Date: Thu, 15 Dec 1994 01:28:59 -0500
From: Logical Language Group <lojbab>
Message-Id: <199412150628.AA17743@access1.digex.net>
To: jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU
Subject: Re: plural
Cc: lojbab@access.digex.net, lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu
Status: RO

>I really don't see what's the benefit of this. What's the advantage of
>letting --More--
>{lei ci prenu cu bevri le botpi} mean that only one of the three carried it?
>
>A different thing is to say that for the three of them to carry it, it is
>enough that the bottle be in the hands of only one, but somehow they were
>acting as a group. Then it would be the whole mass doing the carrying.

The baseball team of 9 men scored a run.
lei so prenu [scored a run].

But only one person crossed home plate, and at most 4 players were involved in
getting that person to score the run (barring oddities like sacrifice flies
and the like). So piro would be VERY misleading at the least.

Likewise
ci cinta preja prenu cu klama le mi zdani
.i lei ci prenu cu cinta preja zukte fi lenu lemi zdani cu cinta se gacri

Ah, but unbeknownst to me, only 1 person did the painting while the other 2
held the ladder.  piro lei prenu did not spread paint. pisu'o lei prenu did.

When you drink "lei" water, your in-mind mass is NOT that portion of the
molecules that you acytually consimed, but the contents of the glass.
The fact that we know from physics that a few molecules evaporated and did not
enter my gullet does not change what the in-mind mass is.  You are trying
to define the in-mind mass as simply that which makes it true if the quantifier
is piro - a most circular  definition in my estimation.

lojbab