From LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Sat Mar 6 22:46:29 2010 Reply-To: Jorge Llambias Sender: Lojban list Date: Sat Dec 16 16:08:13 1995 From: Jorge Llambias Subject: Re: masses (the last one should have been dialectology) X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu, jorge@minerva.phyast.pitt.edu To: John Cowan Status: OR X-From-Space-Date: Sat Dec 16 16:08:13 1995 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU Message-ID: la kris noi ke'a maubo mi prami lo'e mlatu cu cusku di'e > Jorge and pc were doing mean things to water and cats: > > > le xadba be le vi mlatu cu mlatu > > Half of this cat is a cat. > > > >I don't think that makes much sense, or I don't know what is mlatu. > > mlatu isn't necessarily singular. If {le vi mlatu} above referred to Loki > and Thekla, then would {le xadba} be just Loki? I don't think so. {le vi mlatu} could not refer to them both as one entity. It would have to refer to each of them. So {le xadba be le vi mlatu} is "each thing that is half of each of them". Assuming that there is such a thing that can be described as being half of each of them, perhaps the mass composed of their left sides, but I don't think that such a thing is a cat. > Or would {le} distribute so > we're really saying {le re xadba be le re vi mlatu}, i.e. half of *each* cat? It doesn't distribute like that. {ta xadba le re vi mlatu} means that ta is half of Loki and also the same ta is half of Thekla. Perhaps they are Siamese cats? But I wouldn't say that {ta mlatu}. If you say {le re xadba be le re vi mlatu}, then you are talking of two things, each of which is both half of Loki and half of Thekla, and neither of which are things I would call cats. Jorge