From LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Sat Mar 6 22:45:46 2010 Reply-To: "John E. Clifford" Sender: Lojban list Date: Tue Dec 26 11:33:01 1995 From: "John E. Clifford" Subject: tech:masses To: lojban list Status: OR X-From-Space-Date: Tue Dec 26 11:33:01 1995 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU Message-ID: Mr. Rabbit treats not only all rabbits separately but all rabbits collectively as a single individual, in the sense that whatever is true of a rabbit or a group of rabbits collectively (maybe with some restrictions, e.g., about weight, say) is true of Mr. Rabbit. Now, if that is what xorexes meant by _lo'e_ and he also meant the x2 place of to be transparent, it still doesn't fly -- certainly not for unicorn hunting and no even for deer or lions, unless the hunt is successful. The "piecee" construction, "a scoop of..." is the mass-to-count converter, though it does not always (often? ever?) give back the units that were massified in porridgification. The point about mass/count being in VP rather than NP in English is a misremembering of a conflation of two articles (at least one misread) on two other topics. But it makes so much sense to me that I may pursue it; it can't fare worse than the present situation on this topic, where there are half-a-dozen views that end up not even agreeing on what counts as a case to be explained. In any case, there does not seem to be any necessity of Lojban having mass expressions in any of the senses floating around in discussing English, although there are some inferences which we need to explore a bit more (see McCawley on mass nouns for a summary). pc>|83