From phma@oltronics.net Wed Aug 02 19:28:47 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 682 invoked from network); 3 Aug 2000 02:28:47 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m2.onelist.org with QMQP; 3 Aug 2000 02:28:47 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mail.oltronics.net) (204.213.85.8) by mta1 with SMTP; 3 Aug 2000 02:28:46 -0000 Received: from neofelis (root@localhost) by mail.oltronics.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id WAA23027 for ; Wed, 2 Aug 2000 22:28:41 -0400 X-BlackMail: 207.15.133.7, neofelis, , 207.15.133.7 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 22:28:42(EDT) on August 02, 2000 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Beyond Whorf: "things," "qualities," and the origin of nouns and adjectives Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2000 22:12:43 -0400 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.0.29.2] Content-Type: text/plain References: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: <00080222250501.00881@neofelis> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit From: Pierre Abbat X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 3804 On Wed, 02 Aug 2000, Jorge Llambias wrote: li'o >There is no question that an empty bottle is still a bottle >in English. But in Lojban I don't think we can say that it >still actually botpies when it doesn't botpi anything. Think of {botpi} as "contain(er)". A container is still a container when it is not containing anything, just as I am still a programmer when I am not programming. So I can say of the empty water bottle, {ta botpi lo djacu .ijenai ta ca botpi lo djacu}. What's not clear to me is this: How do you say "that water bottle over there" when the bottle is empty now, and whenever it has water in it, it's here? phma