From LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Sat Mar 6 22:45:47 2010 Reply-To: Jorge Llambias Sender: Lojban list Date: Mon Dec 11 13:07:40 1995 From: Jorge Llambias Subject: Re: TECHish: chicago beer & masses To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu, jorge@minerva.phyast.pitt.edu Status: OR X-From-Space-Date: Mon Dec 11 13:07:40 1995 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU Message-ID: <5XpfWHWSkIE.A.9bF.bu0kLB@chain.digitalkingdom.org> And: > The relevant examples, as I recall, is that if loi chicagoans drink > more beer than loi new yorkers, then the total beer consumption in > chicago exceeds that in new york, If you had said lei chicagoans I would agree. What you said (in my interpretation) is that there is a group of chicagoans that drinks more (as a group) than a group of newyorkers. If you talk about lei chicagoans, then I will understand you mean all of them, unless context tells me otherwise, but loi chicagoans is not piro loi chicagoans just as lo broda is not ro lo broda. > while if loe chicagoan drink more > than loe newyorker, then the average per capita boozing in C is more > than that in NY. Yes, as long as you are talking impressionistically, and not necessarily in the properly statistical sense. > As for masses, I don't want to debate them all over again until there is > an official refgrammar treatment of them. Until that exists, I will > continue with what is my current belief - that we either don't know > or disagree about what "masses" are. I think I've already formed an idea of what they are: the collective plural. If they are something else, then I would like to know how to do the collective plural, which is something extremely necessary given that with le/lo you can only get the distributive one. There was and maybe still is disagreement as to the default quantifier for {loi}. Is {loi broda} "all the broda there are, collectively", or is it "some broda, collectively". I think that the second one is the more useful and the more consistent with the other defaults. In any case both can be explicited: {piro loi broda} and {pisu'o loi broda}. Jorge