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Re: [jboske] mei, latest cause celebre

cu'u la djordan.

On Mon, Dec 23, 2002 at 02:20:59AM +1100, Nick Nicholas wrote: 
My contention that {mei} means 'collective' should be easily proven by
usage, btw.

Does anyone ever use {remei} when {pamei} would also be true? If so,
mass. If not, collective.

Yes. If "pamei" is true, you can always take another X and say
"remei", "cimei", etc.

Please expand. So you're saying that, in scenario B --- where John lifts the piano and James doesn't,

lo pamei be lo'i nanmu cu bevri le pipno
lo remei be lo'i nanmu cu bevri le pipno

or? Because, if a twosome is a lojbanmass, then everything sayable of the onesome is sayable of the twosome. If John is blond and James is brunet, then the mass {John, James} is blond, and is brunet.

Does anyone ever use {remei} when {pisu'omei} would also be true? If
so, substance. If not, collective.
I'm not sure what pisu'omei means.

A fraction of a onesome. John's severed limb. CLL kinda sorta blocks this interpretation of lojbanmass, at least sometimes.

And that's built in to our treatment of numbers anyway, right? Because
we've passed law that {re} is always {su'ore}.


re is never su'ore. The reason that we can say "remei" if "pamei"
is also true has nothign to do with numbers, it has to do with how
lojbanmasses work.

True, that is intrinsic to lojbanmass. I wish to suggest that (a) what's true of lojbanmass (which I think of as substance, but whatever) is not true of collective; (b) that we've told people stuff about collectives which is actually true of lojbanmasses; (c) that collectives deserve their own unambiguous way of expression; (d) that as much as possible, it should be using existing stuff in the language.

As you have pointed out (and I'm a dolt for not realising it myself), the collective is done in Lojban by {jo'u}. All I'm saying is, if da .e de make up individuals, and da joi de make up masses, then da jo'u de make up a collective. And if individuals get the gadri lo, and masses get the gadri loi, then collectives should get something. And would give them lu'oi; he may yet get it, but I think it less disruptive if they get lo romei be lo'i.

Jordan, I'm going to badger you in this, but I feel I must. I place before you four scenarios: John not James, John and James separately, John and James together, pieces of John and James. Here they are again. Please tell me if you think your understanding of lojbanmasses and gadri is violated in what follows. If you insist that mei is a lojbanmass and not a collective, please tell me how to disambiguate the collective from the lojbanmass.

(I reiterate that, if remei is mass and not collective, it cannot work: if {lo remna remei} is a lojbanmass, it is true even if bits of John and bits of James do the lifting, or at the least if John and not James do it. So in the following, {lo remei be lo'i remna} must behave exactly like {lei re remna}, if {remei} is a mass. If you say it is, then I concede, {remei} is mass to you, and there is no disambiguation. If you accept my usage of {remei} below, as you hint by using {remei} as a collective disambiguation, then I deem you to be using {remei} as a collective, and we can haggle on the name.)


A: John not James

le re nanmu na bevri
lei re nanmu ja'a bevri
le remei be lo'i nanmu na bevri

naku ge la djan. gi la djeimyz. bevri
la djan. joi la djeumyz. ja'a bevri
la djan jo'u la djeimyz. na bevri

B: John and James separately

le re nanmu ja'a bevri
lei re nanmu ja'a bevri
le remei be lo'i nanmu na bevri

ge la djan. gi la djeimyz. bevri
la djan. joi la djeumyz. ja'a bevri
la djan jo'u la djeimyz. na bevri

C: John and James together

le re nanmu na bevri
lei re nanmu ja'a bevri
le remei be lo'i nanmu ja'a bevri

naku ge la djan. gi la djeimyz bevri
la djan. joi la djeumyz. ja'a bevri
la djan jo'u la djeimyz. ja'a bevri

D: John's and James' severed legs

le re nanmu na bevri
lei re nanmu ja'a bevri
le remei be lo'i nanmu na bevri

naku ge la djan. gi la djeimyz bevri
la djan. joi la djeumyz. ja'a bevri
la djan jo'u la djeimyz. na bevri



Meta-note: it's been a long week in jboskistan: I started recoiling in horror at And saying loi was not a mass, and doubly so at Jorge bringing up that you can't marry the Beatles. Wierdly enough, now I agree with them.

Current take: you marry the mass and not the group. You marry into Beatledom: {do speni lai bitlz.}. You marry The Beatles: {do speni lu'oi la'i bitlz.}/{do speni le romei be la'i bitlz.}

There's still a mess in groups with authority to do things, which we had best sidestep. (And's explicitly said so already.) Paul McCartney writes a solo album: {lai bitlz. finti lo selsanga}. Paul writes an album for the Beatles: {le romei be la'i bitlz. finti}. Because, I suppose, the consent of all group members was required to allow "The Beatles" to be identified with the song.

This is where I think Nora was heading with talk of piano carriers and piano carrying supervisor. But I think this is humongously distinct from masses, because masses are more like "this much of humanity lifted the piano" than "the team lifted the piano." I can see cases where they draw close to each other, but I still think they're distinct.

Erk. That'll do for today.


--
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* Dr Nick Nicholas, French & Italian Studies nickn@unimelb.edu.au *
University of Melbourne, Australia http://www.opoudjis.net
* "Eschewing obfuscatory verbosity of locutional rendering, the *
circumscriptional appelations are excised." --- W. Mann & S. Thompson,
* _Rhetorical Structure Theory: A Theory of Text Organisation_, 1987. *
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