Re: Quantifiers (was Re: A modest proposal #2: verdicality)

[Bob LeChevalier <lojbab@access.digex.net>]

>I beg to disagree.  {re lu'a le nanmu ku joi le ninmu ku joi le verba}
>can't be "the man's ear and the woman's nose".  The mass is composed of
>three elements:  the man, the woman and the child, and you are selecting
>two of them.  Neither the man's nose, nor the man's going to the market,
>nor the man's grandparents are members of the mass.  Otherwise, where do
>you stop?  Please don't invoke inalienable possession or anything like
>that.  Those are possessions of the mass, not its components.
>
>Jorge

Example:  You are approaching a corner, and you see as you approach,
sticking from behind the corner, a man's ear and a woman's nose, but no
other identifiable part of their bodies.  You also can hear from their
conversation that there is a child present.  In this case, then, you can
say that "mi viska re lu'a le nanmu ku joi le ninmu ku joi le verba" and
mean precisely that you see the man's ear and the woman's nose, since in
fact that is what you actually DO see.  From the components (I like
"portions" better in some contexts, like this one), you infer properties
of the whole.  To you the observer, the ear IS the man and the nose IS
the woman.

lojbab