Re: [lojban-beginners] Re: my first translation

[Jacob Errington <nictytan@gmail.com>]

For what it's worth, {lo matne} does refer to a mass of butter, because butter sort of only comes as a mass. That is to say that the only things that make sense in matne1 are masses, and that therefore, {lo matne}, referring to one or more matne1, is inherently referring to mass. {loi} (and by extension {lo'i} and all the le-based and la-based friends) are just convenient shortenings for LAhE+lo compounds (assuming a naturalistic interpretation of the way LAhE work WRT quantifiers.) That being said, if using {lo} produces a symbol whose referent(s) is(are) one (or more) individual(s), but a mass is desired, then applying the appropriate LAhE, in this case {lu'o}, effectively solves that problem. Let's say I'm being attacked by a group of soldiers; it might not be the case that each one of them personally attacks me. In particular, their commander, who may be equally armed and equally dangerous, is probably not going to personally inflict any harm to me, but of course, without him or her, the operation might not have been a success. Therefore, it is certainly appropriate for me to use {loi sonci mi gunta}, because the normal referents of sonci1 are individuals, not masses.

Regardless, the emphasis of plurality is unimportant given the context in which these words are actually being spoken. If a fleet of ships bearing the american flag appears, for instance, loudly proclaiming {mi'e lo merko,} I think it's pretty clear that the appropriate translation is "We're the Americans"/"We're America".

mu'o

On 11 August 2012 00:02, .arpis. <rpglover64+jbobau@gmail.com> wrote:

That seems to be exemplifying the difference between individual and collective.

On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 11:55 PM, Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu> wrote:
> On Friday 10 August 2012 16:20:18 ianek wrote:
>> {lai}, {loi}, {lei} are not plural. A mass can be equally well
>> composed of one component. That said, I don't quite get what masses
>> are in Lojban, eg. why {lo matne} can't be a mass:
>> http://dag.github.com/cll/6/3/ Whether or not a mass is correct in the
>> context of Borg, plurality is not implied.
>
> If there is one stick of butter somewhere, it is equally correct to call
> it "lo matne" and "loi matne". If there are two or more sticks of butter,
> there is a semantic difference between "lo matne" and "loi matne", which is a
> bit hard to explain without some predicate. Butters don't carry pianos, or
> take any action, and they are subdivisible.
>
> Here's my example of "lo/loi" being the opposite of singular/plural:
> lo mi kerfa cu jdari .iku'i loi mi kerfa cu ranti
> My hairs are hard, but my hair is soft.
>
> Pierre
> --
> li ze te'a ci vu'u ci bi'e te'a mu du
> li ci su'i ze te'a mu bi'e vu'u ci
>
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--
mu'o mi'e .arpis.

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