Return-Path: Received: (qmail 2532 invoked from network); 5 Sep 2000 13:59:00 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m3.onelist.org with QMQP; 5 Sep 2000 13:59:00 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO snufflelufagas.bofh.asn.au) (139.130.48.34) by mta1 with SMTP; 5 Sep 2000 13:58:58 -0000 Received: from river.UUCP (uucp@localhost) by snufflelufagas.bofh.asn.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) with UUCP id XAA09881; Tue, 5 Sep 2000 23:53:51 +1000 Received: by forest.bofh.asn.au via sendmail from stdin id (Debian Smail3.2.0.102) for mark@kli.org; Tue, 5 Sep 2000 01:11:45 +1100 (EST) To: "Mark E. Shoulson" Cc: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] How many? References: <20000901213925.11683.qmail@pi.meson.org> Date: 05 Sep 2000 01:11:35 +1100 In-Reply-To: "Mark E. Shoulson"'s message of "1 Sep 2000 21:39:25 -0000" Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.0803 (Gnus v5.8.3) Emacs/20.6 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii From: Peter Moulder X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 4247 Content-Length: 716 Lines: 14 "Mark E. Shoulson" writes: > xo da se finpe > > (or {xo da finpe} for "how many fish are there in the universe?") Incidentally, I think that `xy. finpe' does not necessarily imply that x physically exists in the world; otherwise there would be no way of talking about non-real fish (because `xy. finpe .ije xy. naku zasti' would be self-contradictory). So `ci'i' (infinity) can be a correct answer to `xo da finpe', at least if one understands the tense to be merely existential. (My understanding is that unspecified tenses in Lojban are ambiguous similar to zo'e rather than existential like DA, in which case `vo' can also be a correct answer to `xo da finpe'.) co'o mi'e pijem.