Re: Collective and Substance

[Nick Nicholas <opoudjis@optushome.com.au>]

cu'u la .and.
> None of the below is intended to imply a revision to the taxonomy
> of gadri types that the discussion has agreed on.

Or not....

Having relapsed into fundamentalism, I go into this with the proviso 
that boundaries can be extrinsic (re lo djacu), and culture-specific, 
and Lojban by definition allows all things to be bounded or 
unbounded.

> * The difference between broda Substance and a single individual broda.
> * Intrinsic Boundaries (- can be fuzzy) = Countability
> - broda Substance lacks intrinsic boundaries = is uncountable
> - a single individual broda has intrinsic boundaries = is countable

Or in any case, if you call something a substance, you're ignoring 
any intrinsic boundaries. It is true that {loi remna cu bevri le 
pipno}.

> * divisibility: within reason, you can arbitrarily subdivide broda
> Substance and end up with broda Substance, but you can't arbitrarily
> subdivide a single individual broda and end up with a single
> individual broda.

Damn. That's what I said.

> * Collective
> * is a group of two or more broda (seen another way, a single individual
> broda would be a group of one broda)

Assuming you can count broda. Which is reasonable. I still think 
everything sayable of a collective is also sayable of a lojbanmass, 
but this is more about perspective than truth conditions.

> * is not Divisible: although you can divide a group into two groups,
> you can't *arbitrarily* subdivide it -- you must subdivide it at
> the boundaries between group members.

OK...

> * may or may not have intrinsic boundaries (but a group of a definite
> number of members does have intrinsic boundaries)
> [Hence a MOI brivla for Collective would be compatible with both
> a Substance gadri and a non-Substance gadri.]

*shrug*

This-all is cool, but backward compatibility means you can switch off 
intrinsic boundaries, and talk in terms of extrinsic boundaries, or 
ignore all boundaries.

--
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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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