From LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Sat Mar 6 22:45:57 2010 Reply-To: ucleaar Sender: Lojban list Date: Sun Dec 24 07:14:40 1995 From: ucleaar Subject: Re: tech:masses X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan Status: OR X-From-Space-Date: Sun Dec 24 07:14:40 1995 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU Message-ID: pc: > The point, as and reminds us, is that all those habitual and gneric > and professional and ... labels have the potential, at least, for > opacity and needs a warning and perhaps a marker to prevent > problems. I hope that what I reminded us is that habitual/generic/professional "labels" have the potential for opacity, but not that we need a warning and perhaps a marker to prevent problems. But we skirmish on this in another message. > As for porridgification (I think I came in late in that discussion, > since it sounds familiar once mentioned, but I can't find it in my > archives), it is, of course, whatever the English (and so on) > count/mass distinction is. Yes, that's what I intended. Or at least, porridgification is count-to- mass conversion. Mass-to-count conversion has no lojban counterpart. > The point I thought I was trying to make originally about that was > that linguists now locate the distinction not in noun phrases > (gadri or at least whole sumti) but in verb phrases and that, for > Lojban, this seemed a perfectly useful way to operate, with the > assumption that the subject of such verb phrases would probably be > collectivist _loi_ expressions. Could you explain further? I'm not familiar with the discussions you're referring to. (And I can't think what you mean, for to tell whether a common noun is mass or count, you don't have to find a verb.) > and: > Your [=Jorge's] understanding of {loe}, we arrived at with much blood > sweat & tears [& tho it makes sense I can't believe it was the intention > when loe was invented (and I believe there to have been no > intelligent reason behind the addition of {lee})]. > pc: > Well, what IS this hard-won understanding? I can make no sense > of xorxes' examples, but that is largely because of the added > problem of opacity. Archetype? (best example or something in the > realm of ideas?) Something very similar to your "average" (which I now think shd be given to {lee}), as in "The average adult has 2.4 children". It treats all members of the class of brodas as the same individual; whereas porridgification ignores individuals' boundaries, myopic singularization (= meaning of {loe}) ignores individuals' haecceities [a word I'd never have dreamed of using in public, had you not done so the other day!]. Here's stuff I've recently posted: > Myopic singularization involves identifying every member of the > category with every other member, i.e. failing to recognize the > differences between them. > Suppose on Monday you see Flopsy and on Tuesday you see Mopsy. > How many rabbits did you see? Two. Now suppose you saw Cottontail > on Monday and Cottontail again on Tuesday. How many rabbits did you > see? One. Now suppose that on Monday you see a rabbit and on Tuesday > you see a rabbit. How many rabbits did you see? Well, to answer you > have to find out whether it was the same rabbit. Myopic singularization > just assumes it was the same rabbit - it says "as far as I can (be > bothered to) tell, there is just the one rabbit". --- And