Re: [lojban] Re: A (rather long) discussion of {all}

[Nathaniel Krause <nathanielkrause@yahoo.com>]

Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:

When I first started
learning Lojban, I found the translation of English plurals strange.
{su'o re la gerku} seemed like an unintuitive and deficient
translation of "the dogs" - is that really the only reason we have
plurals? was the distinction between numerical 1 and all those numbers
greater than 1 - was this distinction by itself important enough to
have such a great effect on language? I didn't think much of it at the
time, but looking back now I find that this corresponds to my
position. It is my understanding that the large difference between 1
and >1 stems from how our minds treat single entities vs single
entities composed of many entities.

"su'o re la gerku" is about as good a translation of "the dogs" as anything you'd find in Chinese. That is, it's certainly possible to have a functioning language that ignores the difference between 1 and >1.

Interestingly, Chinese does have a plural, but it can only be used to describe people.

-Nat Krause

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