On Wed, Dec 18, 2002 at 06:09:24AM -0500, John Cowan wrote: > Jordan DeLong scripsit: > > A "quantity of water" is what a mass is in english. "lei djacu" is > > a mass of quantities of water. Or a mass of masses. > > Nope. Trust me on this one. The intent when writing the gismu list > was to make "le djacu" a water individual. But there's no such thing as a water individual. paunai Are you trying to tell me that you think x1 of djacu is always a single molecule? You mean that "le djacu" is an individual in the lojban sense. It's actually a quantity of water (i.e. english-style "mass")---I could refer to an ocean as "le djacu". > For another example, see the contrast between "bean" and "rice". > In English, "bean" is a count noun, "rice" is a mass noun. Accordingly, > the English place structures for "dembi" and "rismi" say "x1 is a bean" > and "x1 is a quantity of rice" respectively. (A quantity could be as > little as a single grain). Ugh, that's pretty malglico. I wish they had either both been made into mass nouns, or neither. > Historically, "pease" was a mass noun as well, covering the same space as > "bean", but it came to be construed as a plural count noun "peas", and > a new singular "pea" was constructed for it. (Semantic differentiation > came later, and we can still talk of either black-eyed peas or black-eyed > beans.) > > > However, as someone (and or nick or xorxes?) was saying, lojban > > masses aren't quite the same as it is in english, so calling it a > > "mass of masses" is mixing terminology (it's two different senses > > of the word "mass"). > > I don't know if you're talking about djacu or gunmi here, but in any case > a mass of masses is indistinguishable from a mass (unlike a set of sets, > which is not the same as a set of the elements of the sets). Not when it is two different conceptions of "mass". "lei djacu" is a lojban-style "mass" of quantities of water. -- Jordan DeLong - fracture@allusion.net lu zo'o loi censa bakni cu terzba le zaltapla poi xagrai li'u sei la mark. tuen. cusku
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