From @uga.cc.uga.edu:lojban@cuvmb.bitnet Fri Jun 09 22:04:05 1995 Received: from punt2.demon.co.uk by stryx.demon.co.uk with SMTP id AA3314 ; Fri, 09 Jun 95 22:04:03 BST Received: from punt2.demon.co.uk via puntmail for ia@stryx.demon.co.uk; Thu, 08 Jun 95 02:12:02 GMT Received: from uga.cc.uga.edu by punt2.demon.co.uk id aa09789; 8 Jun 95 3:11 +0100 Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU by uga.cc.uga.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 4336; Wed, 07 Jun 95 21:56:02 EDT Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU (NJE origin LISTSERV@UGA) by UGA.CC.UGA.EDU (LMail V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 8089; Wed, 7 Jun 1995 21:38:25 -0400 Date: Wed, 7 Jun 1995 18:29:03 EDT Reply-To: jorge@phyast.pitt.edu Sender: Lojban list From: jorge@phyast.pitt.edu Subject: Re: masses - response to Jorge X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Iain Alexander Message-ID: <9506080311.aa09789@punt2.demon.co.uk> Status: R > >I agree with that, you are seeing two of them, the man and the woman. > >If you only see the man's ear and the man's leg, but nothing of the > >woman or the child, then you are seeing one of them, not two of them. > >You'd say {mi viska pa lu'a le nanmu ku joi le ninmu ku joi le verba}, > >so your example agrees with what I'm saying. > > I don't agree. But your comments don't contradict what I said. > In English, let us say one person asks "I am looking for > a man, a woman and a child. Can you see them?" If you can see only the > man's ear and leg, but have other evidence (e.g. voices) that tell you > that the others are present, you might indeed be considered to answer > truthfully if you say "Yes, I see them." But you wouldn't say "I see two of tham" if what you see is the man's ear and leg, would you? > We're getting to the > nitty-gritty about masses here, in that the components must display the > relevant properties of the mass (whatever they are, which may be > situationally dependent) in order to "be" the mass. For example > "loi djacu cu cilmo" implies as a component a mass of water which is > significantly larger than an individual molecule, and in liquid form. Yes, I would take any {lo djacu} to be significantly larger than an individual molecule. If I say {mi pinxe lo djacu}, "I drink a quantity of water", that clearly doesn't refer to a few molecules. I am not disagreeing with what you say. What I said is that {re lu'a le nanmu ku joi le ninmu ku joi le verba} can't refer to the man's ear and the man's leg. Jorge