Message-Id: <199512170057.CAA09646@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Sat, 16 Dec 1995 16:51:46 -0800
Reply-To: "John E. Clifford" <pcliffje@CRL.COM>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: "John E. Clifford" <pcliffje@CRL.COM>
Subject:      masses
To: Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Content-Length: 1723
Lines: 25

x: I'm not sure what's a typical lion of the intentional world, but I
think that {lo'e cinfo} is not {lo fadni be le ka cinfo} = "a typical
holder of the property of being a lion". {lo'e cinfo} is really a place
filler that avoids having to instantiate with a value from the real world.
pc: I'm not sure what it would be -- different in different worlds, I
suppose.  I'm not sure about "typical" either, but it is surely nearer
that than an empty placeholder, indeed, more than "any-old lion will do,"
as is usually the case of lion hunting.  The fulfillment set (intentional
but hopefully overlapping the real, since each real lion will satisfy the
hunter, but no one preselected). x: Notice that this requires that {loi
mlatu} be not the mass of all cats, but rather a mass of some cats, or
equivalently some mass of cats. Also, none of these use the equivalent to
the English "of cat", so that we don't have to use in Lojban a sumti
equivalent to that "cat". pc: I agree on _loi_ (reluctantly, but the
objections are always coming from one of the other _loi_ stories).  But,
as you note, none of your translations get the English, the massy cat
beyond (or bundled in) the various cats.  I suspect that Lojban may need
either a lujvo, "cat-stuff" and so on, or the verbal sense gets worked out
correctly and we have a simple VP taking (I think) _loi_ in the relevant
sumti places: the collective of cats homogenize into to something that
weighs so and so, divides naturally into twelve units, spreads out over an
acre.  But, as you point out, most of these do not need the homogenizing
part.  Which is why I think that the collective version is central and the
others are derived in ways not yet fully worked out.
pc>|83