From @gate.demon.co.uk,@uga.cc.uga.edu:lojban@cuvmb.bitnet Fri Jun 09 22:05:14 1995 Received: from punt2.demon.co.uk by stryx.demon.co.uk with SMTP id AA3329 ; Fri, 09 Jun 95 22:05:09 BST Received: from punt2.demon.co.uk via puntmail for ia@stryx.demon.co.uk; Thu, 08 Jun 95 04:52:31 GMT Received: from gate.demon.co.uk by punt2.demon.co.uk id aa12517; 8 Jun 95 5:51 +0100 Received: from uga.cc.uga.edu by gate.demon.co.uk id aa28159; 7 Jun 95 21:01 GMT-60:00 Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU by uga.cc.uga.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 9903; Wed, 07 Jun 95 14:58:26 EDT Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU (NJE origin LISTSERV@UGA) by UGA.CC.UGA.EDU (LMail V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 5886; Wed, 7 Jun 1995 13:18:57 -0400 Date: Wed, 7 Jun 1995 09:18:26 -0700 Reply-To: "John E. Clifford" Sender: Lojban list From: "John E. Clifford" Subject: properties of masses X-To: lojban list To: Iain Alexander Message-ID: <9506072101.aa28159@gate.demon.co.uk> Status: R I agree with xorxes that my description of the use of mass terms fits ill with the default quantifiers for mass expressions. But I have some doubts about the default quantifiers for all the essentially singular descriptors (I have doubts about all the default quantifiers, if the truth were known, but I can make them stick in these cases). Consider the claim that the man touched the door. If you take quantifiers seriously (possibly a mistake), you have to say that that mean that some part of the man touched the door -- clearly all of him did not. But if you say that the man entered the room, you presumably mean that all of him did, not just a part (though, of course, each of the parts did too). So, what is the default quantifier here, given that we say "the man" both times? Notice, by the way, that if we try to get hyperaccurate and say that the man's hand (or fingertips) touched the door, we end up saying something very different from when we say that the man did it. I suspect that the correct answer about default quantifiers (assuming we want to mess with them at all) is that they are contextually defined, another kind of conventional implication, often largely conditioned by the main predicate (as in the cases above). In short, quantifiers or no, the description I gave of the behavior of mass sumti vis a vis the underlying individual and submass sumti is correct in broad strokes. The picky details require almost case by case work, again largely depending upon the predicates involved. pc>|83