Date: Tue, 9 Dec 1997 04:38:38 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199712090938.EAA14728@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: semisummary: countability X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2221 X-From-Space-Date: Tue Dec 9 04:38:40 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU >Lojbab: >> lo valsi are distributed indivudal members of the set or words. > >But must each member be a single word? >I< would use it that way, but then I am an English native speaker. I can imagine that there could be language speakers that might do otherwise. The distinction seems to be realted to the masss/count noun phenomenon. If the word were djacu/water and you asked me, I simply could not answer exactly what one unit of water would be - it could be molecules or it could be glassfuls, and presumably context would tell us. In the case of words, it seems less clear that, given a quantifier grea ter than or equal to one, and thus suggesting a count noun interpretation, that the there is any other obvious "unit" than individual words to count. But I cannot rule out such a possibility. However we have the Lojban word selci, and a convention that lujvo usi ng it (as the tertanru modificand) clarifies that we are dealing with the smallest subunits of the concept in question which display ka broda ( the relevant properties). So valsyselci would unquestionably be individual words, and one could use gunma/girzu/porsi as the tertau to indicate larger units than individual words. >I didn't mean to be asking that. My point applies to any brivla >where delimitation criteria are part of the sense of the word. YOu mean where English speakers see them as "objects" rather than as mass nouns? %^) It will have to be seen whether something as subtle as this ever breaks free of our English-dominated spawning of the language. We would have to have a language native from a language that has different mass/count noun groupings or which doesn't have a mass/count distinction in the basic word meaning, asnd see how such people tackle such things. lojbab ---- lojbab lojbab@access.digex.net Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: ftp.access.digex.net /pub/access/lojbab or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/" Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.