Re: [jboske] Digest Number 135

[John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>]

And Rosta scripsit:

> "There was person all over the road"
> "There was a countable portion of person all over the road"
> 
> -- you *are* saying "the prenu can't be counted, because their
> boundaries have been erased".

Ah, I see now.

> Because, for thux sake, "piroloi" means "the whole of the mass of"
> and "pi su'o loi" means "part of the mass of" or equivalently
> "part of the whole of the mass of". Since "piro" means "the whole
> of" and "pisu'o" means "part of", it stands to reason that "loi"
> must mean "the mass of".

Well, if you are married to compositional semantics, yes. To me,
this is like inferring that since {stone lion} means "stone lion",
that {lion} must mean "something that is either a lion or a sculpture
shaped like a lion", which is perverse. Fleshliness is part of the
sense of "lion", and {lion} just means "lion". When combined with "stone",
the property of being made of flesh is overridden.

Analogously, being quantified "part of" is an overrideable property of "loi".

> > lo du be no broda cu brode
> > da poi du be no broda cu brode
> > da du be no broda .ije da brode
> > su'o da no de poi broda zo'u (tu'e da du de .ije da broda tu'u)
> > su'o da naku su'o de poi broda zo'u (tu'e ... tu'u)
> 
> These are okay.
> 
> > Now since da = de, we can say:
> 
> Where does "da = de" come from?

Why, it says right there "da du de". If da is de, then we can replace
de by da salva veritate:

[su'o] da [su'o] de zo'u da du de .ije da broda
[suo] da zo'u da broda
da broda

Ooops, I see what I did wrong: da du de is inside the negation.

You are right and I am wrong.

-- 
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