Message-Id: <199512111634.SAA17533@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Mon, 11 Dec 1995 11:32:35 -0500
Reply-To: Jorge Llambias <jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: Jorge Llambias <jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU>
Subject:      Re: TECHish: chicago beer & masses
To: Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Content-Length: 1670
Lines: 36

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