At 09:29 AM 3/2/02 -0500, pycyn@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 3/1/2002 8:18:39 PM Central Standard Time, jjllambias@hotmail.com writes:Consider the text of each chapter of a book. Then the massof texts from all chapters are the text of the book, they collaborate to be the text of the book.This is not obvious, albeit plausible. How do the details go? <How about a mass of many waters, can it be water?>Sure, that one seems to work, but I wonder if it isn't just malglico from the mass-noun status of "water".
If you can treat water as a mass noun, then you can treat dog as a mass noun. Western speakers are not used to doing so. I think you end up with something akin to Mr. Dog (our Trobriand Island friend).
lojbab -- lojbab lojbab@lojban.org Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org