Return-Path: LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@vms.dc.LSOFT.COM Received: from SEGATE.SUNET.SE (segate.sunet.se [192.36.125.6]) by xiron.pc.helsinki.fi (8.7.1/8.7.1) with ESMTP id JAA07042 for ; Mon, 18 Dec 1995 09:15:40 +0200 Message-Id: <199512180715.JAA07042@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi> Received: from listmail.sunet.se by SEGATE.SUNET.SE (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.0a) with SMTP id 78009844 ; Mon, 18 Dec 1995 8:15:34 +0100 Date: Mon, 18 Dec 1995 00:10:05 -0700 Reply-To: Chris Bogart Sender: Lojban list From: Chris Bogart Subject: Re: Disjunctive compounds (was: left factoring) X-To: lojban@cuvmb.bitnet To: Veijo Vilva Content-Length: 1053 Lines: 23 >la xorxes. cusku di'e > >> {lei brife ja canre} logically seems to work, too, but I don't find it >> very appealing. Maybe it's just that we are not used to such things >> in natlangs. > >Depends on which natlangs. Ivan says in his paper on noun compounds: > ># There don't seem to be many languages which have disjunctive noun-noun ># compounds, in which the set of instances of the complex concept is the ># union of the sets of instances of the components, as in That seems to me like a slightly different thing, although {le} might let you get away with it. Japanese has a conjunction "ya" which explicitly does this: "enpitsu ya pen" means "pencils, pens, and the like". I don't think we have the equivalent in Lojban, since {ja} doesn't add "and the like". ____ Chris Bogart \ / http://www.quetzal.com Boulder, CO \/ cbogart@quetzal.com "Life is strange. Some people get rich, others eat shit and die. Maybe a fat man will feel his heart burst and call it beautiful." - Hunter S Thompson