From lee@piclab.com Fri Nov 02 17:36:50 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: lee@piclab.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_0_1); 3 Nov 2001 01:36:50 -0000 Received: (qmail 55484 invoked from network); 3 Nov 2001 01:36:50 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.167) by m4.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 3 Nov 2001 01:36:50 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO piclab.com) (216.121.191.70) by mta1.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 3 Nov 2001 01:36:50 -0000 Received: from localhost (lcrocker@localhost) by piclab.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA18827 for ; Fri, 2 Nov 2001 17:36:07 -0800 X-Authentication-Warning: piclab.com: lcrocker owned process doing -bs Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2001 17:36:06 -0800 (PST) X-Sender: lcrocker@piclab.com To: lojban Subject: Isn't everything a noun? (was Countability) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII From: Lee Daniel Crocker X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 11902 > I'll just note that there are two equally coherent but incompatible stories: > > A. "valsi" means "is a single word" (and so on for all countables, remna > etc.). {lu pa re ci li'u valsi} is false. > > B. "valsi" means "is word(s), is wordage" (and so on for all countables, > remna etc.). {lu pa re ci li'u valsi} is true. However, "selci" is > exceptional in that it DOES mean "is a single unit" (according to my > reading of Lojbab) I've been absent from the list a while, and I was never that active, but I've been following the language for a long time and using it to flex my mental muscles for a while now. I have the book, and I have the other reference works handy on my server. I don't see how (A) can possibly be reconciled with the books, or with general Lojban foundations. The books make a point that predicates are not "nouns" and "verbs", and that "le/lo" descriptions are not inherently quantified, so the whole concept of mass noun/count noun is meaningless. Which one is {blanu}, for instance? It can be used as a noun, right? Is {le blanu} "the blue thing(s)", or "some blue stuff"? How can it not be either? Now, if we _want_ to get down to specifics and measure (or count) things, then we certainly can: {le blanu poi ke'a grake li cipa ke'u} (The 30 grams of blue stuff). Likewise, {le cipa blanu} (The 30 blue things). Why should any other predicates like {valsi} be different, just because it seems "natural" to measure them in units of "units", rather than grams or meters? Why should we not be able to speak of centimeters of wordage (as might a typesetter, for example) rather than specific individual "units" of wordage? The language already favors the "unit" interpretation of things by having simple quantifiers like {le pa...} without specific measurement units, and if we want to further emphasize the countable nature of something, we have {selci} (though its gloss that x2 is usually a mass-ish kind of thing seems out of place). So why further limit the meaning of any predicate by including the "unit of" as part of its definition, when there's no benefit to it, and clearly some problems? Am I mistaken that a simple quantifier on any predicate implies that number of "units" of some kind? For example, couldn't "the 17 tallest men..." thing be {lo paze xadni clarai be fo lo'i nanmu} (The 17 body- longest-things, among the set of men) rather than {le'i paze nanmu...} or something else awkward? -- Lee Daniel Crocker "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC