X-Digest-Num: 359 Message-ID: <44114.359.1963.959273826@eGroups.com> Date: Wed, 09 Feb 2000 14:29:19 -0500 From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" Subject: Re: Re: 3 loaves X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 1963 Content-Length: 2524 Lines: 61 At 10:53 AM 02/09/2000 +0000, sklyanin@pdmi.ras.ru wrote: >From: sklyanin@pdmi.ras.ru > >Ivan Derzhanski wrote: > > >> Also it should be {pa barda bliku}, > >> or {pa lo barda bliku}, not {lo pa}. > > >Or {lo barda nanba}. One kalach is simply a large quantity > >of good white bread. > >It was my first choice too. However, after that I reread the definition >of the gismu {nanba} and noticed that it is expressed precisely in the >same words as that of e.g. {djacu} or other uncountable substances. Compare: > >{nanba}: x1 is a quantity of/contains bread [leavened or unleavened] made > from grains x2 > >{djacu}: x1 is made of/contains/is a quantity/expanse of water > >{cidro}: x1 is a quantity of/contains/is made of hydrogen (H) > > >From this parallelism I concluded (prematurely?) that bread is treated in >lojban as a substance, like water, milk, air etc. So, I decided in favor of >{bliku} as a safely countable object. > >By the way, can we say {pa djacu}, or {pa cidro}? Does it have any reasonable >meaning? You are looking at an English artifact. In Lojban, all things are countable with pa/le and all things are massifiable with pisu'o/lei. In English, bread is usually a mass noun - "have some bread", not "have a bread" - so I used the mass wording in the English definition of the gismu. As for what the unit is, when you attach a count to a traditionally massed item, it is determined by the context. With English count nouns, we generally assume the default - the smallest unit that retains the sense of being a whole. With English mass nouns, using a count indicates a socially relevant quantity ("Waiter, we would like a beer and two waters.") I would assume therefore that pa djacu either means a molecule (or other small portion of water that has all the relevant properties of water), or a conversationally relevant quantity of water (a glassful or a pitcher). The same would be true for pa cidro, except that one must strain to come up with a conversationally relevant usage. How about tanks of various gasses in a factory? "Load 3 hydrogens and 1 helium on the truck" would have a clearly Lojban counterpart. The difference of course is that Lojban does not restrict when this can be done at all. lojbab ---- lojbab lojbab@lojban.org Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org