Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1998 02:55:20 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199804090655.CAA27453@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: Lojban ML: Syllogism and sophism X-To: jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-UIDL: b50f01e452096a01816310c1c91e7f7f X-Mozilla-Status: 8011 X-From-Space-Date: Thu Apr 09 12:15:45 1998 X-From-Space-Address: - >Nobody else offered any full translation either way. Do you have >a short and snappy translation that avoids the paradox? I don't do "short and snappy", unless something elegant comes to me by instinct. Hence I have not tried to better your effort. >> If we want the ambiguitry of English, why bother using Lojban? > >English is as capable of disambiguation as is Lojban, isn't it? I don't think so. Every expression which disambiguates in English is itself ambiguous. It is only by using our very sophisticated and human "understanding" that we are able to resolve which meaning applies. >The best translation for the property "mass" in my opinion is >{le ka grake}, having mass is having "gramness". That is indeed A concept of mass - but I would clarify "gramness" as the property of being measureable in grams. Yet I would presume that energy could also be measured in grams using c squared as a conversion, so this is not the essence of "mass" which classically is seen as a measurement of matter. "marji" is "matter" which among other thinsg seems to have composition to ever finer levels of analysis. And "mass" is the degree/amount to which a substance has/is composed of matter, on an open-ended scale. As I said, this is one of the paradigm-formers that I use to conceive of "ni". No doubt this means you can/will try to tear holes in it %^). But to me everything measureable is a "ni" of something. Usually, though, we find it easier toget "ni" from what are in English , adjectives. e.g. clani -> long ni clani -> length; slabu ->old, ni slabu -> age. If marji is considered as an adjective, it seems to me that ni marji must be "mass". lojbab