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Re: [lojban] Re: A (rather long) discussion of {all}
On 7/12/06, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
On 7/12/06, Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:
> No, I want to know how you explain why the singular is the only one
> that is not subject to collectivity.
You need at least two things before you can have a distinction between
distributing or not distributing something among them. Isn't that obvious?
It's obvious by my account, but not by yours. My account offers an
explanation of this, and exactly how it comes about. You seem to take
this (and several other important points) for granted, instead of
having a better look at why this is so..
Your distributive and collective are markers for your 'variable
plural/singular reference'. Your distributive has a certain type of
relationship between the students and the hat, your collective has a
certain type of relationship between the students and the building.
Which one do you use when 'the student(s)' is singular? Can you use
both? Perhaps you use neither, and some third way? I don't remember
your (I think strange) way of marking distributivity/collectivity
explicitly. Does anything prevent you from using {pa} in both?
...though I doubt that receiving the answers to these questions is
going to help me understand what how you think language works, since I
still don't know the nature of your relationship that points to these
26 students collectively - in fact, I don't think that I'm very sure
that I understand the relationship that points to these 26 students
individually. My explanation of "relationship" is very consistent. Two
identities are directly related. Your explanation hasn't been more
than a wide wave of the arm in the direction of "the 26 students";
"yeah, those things yonder are related to this building/these hats".
Uh, /how/? The only way I can think of a relationship working is
directly, by taking one identity, and drawing a mental line to another
identity, or to a concept. Perhaps you can offer me an explanation as
to what else a 'relationship' could be.
I offer that "a human cannot
conceive of 100 identities. If he does not conceive of each, and yet
conceives of something with 100 as its number, then what is it that he
has in his head? Some one thing else." proves that a position that
suggests that there are in fact 100 things in our mind that we
predicate things of is wrong. If language should be a reflection of
thought, then it would be wrong to use structures that suggest this.
...from my response to John.
> Why does adding a distributive
> (and collective) marker to a singular make no sense?
Because there is no distinction to be made. Why does it not make
any difference to order a set of numbers from smallest to largest or
from largest to smallest when the set contains a single number?
Same thing with distributivity, if there is only one thing, distributive
and non-distributive give identical results.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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