Message-Id: <199512152141.XAA01718@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Fri, 15 Dec 1995 13:30:36 -0800
Reply-To: "John E. Clifford" <pcliffje@CRL.COM>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: "John E. Clifford" <pcliffje@CRL.COM>
Subject:      masses (the last one should have been dialectology)
To: Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Content-Length: 3111
Lines: 58

xorxes;
I didn't very well understand what you meant by the "verbal side of
masses".
pc:
I meant the suggestion that so-called mass expressions got their
massiness from the verb phrase, not the noun phrase -- where
linguists have usually looked in the past.  If that theory holds up,
the appropriate noun phrase to be involved is just _loi_ in the
collective sense, I think.  Whatever massy behavior there is is the
result of individuals acting together, not of either some
superindividual nor of each individual acting alone.  I think.
xorxes:
For the individual-as-species case, I'm happy with {lo'e}:
        lo'e cinfo cu citka lo'e rectu
        The lion eats meat.
        The lion is a meat eater.
        la djan kalte lo'e cinfo
        John hunts the lion.
        John hunts lions.
        John is a lion hunter.
pc:
Actually, the third case is more species-as-individual in outlook,
all individuals and groups of individuals, whether collectively or
distributively, of, say, rabbits are identified with the single
referent, classically, Mr. Rabbit.  Again, this follows different rules
from the the collectives and the masses, but might plausibly be
related to the collectives.

But I doubt that anyone hunts -- in the kalte sense -- lo'e cinfo.  For
one thing, there is no such individual.  A person who is hunting a
lion will be happy with anyone he happens to get.  And a lion
hunter (cinfo kalte) may not even be trying at the moment.  x2 of
kalte is opaque, but probably _lo'e cinfo_ is an automatic
projection (unless it has to be a typical lion of the intentional
world, not of this one).

xorxes: I don't think Lojban makes the distinction between "shiftingly
bounded continuities" and its opposite, at least not with any article.
pc: Well, that was one of the sources of _loi_ (at least of JCB's version)
and it has never gotten completely out of the discussion. As I said, some
people are trying to place the peculiarities of this kind of claim in the
verb phrase rather than the noun.  On the other hand, Lojban does have
some gismu that are defined as "a portion of..."  (water, milk, various
elements, air, whatever).  I suspect these are what are going to turn up
in the most common mass expressions (as the English words do in English)
but English (and most other languages where the distinction makes sense)
allow massification of just about any substantive (at least):
container/content structures ("ten pounds of cat," "twelve head of cat,"
volume images ("an acre of cat"), rejection of direct numeration (see the
above examples), and the rest and, so far as I can tell, so does Lojban.
Scoop a measure of water out of a pond and you have two (slightly
different) measures of water, cut a natural measure of cat in two and you
have two measures of cat, though neither a "natural" measure any more
(well, depending on how you make the cut).  Lojban has not messed with
this format nearly as much as TLI Loglan once did, but it has been an
undercurrent in some discussions of _loi_.  (It was, by the way, part of
the original source of the _pi_ quantifiers, as I recall it).
pc>|83