Re: [lojban] the 17 tallest men

[John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>]

Pierre Abbat scripsit:

> But Lojban has grammatical setness and massness, so we can say "The
> subset which, considered as a mass, is tallest among the 17-element
> subsets". Since the place structure of pazemei is "x1 is the mass of
> set x2 which has 17 members x3", {le clarai ke nanmu pazemei} refers
> to the mass and {le clarai ke nanmu te pazemei} to the individuals.

That works if we say (which is somewhat counterintuitive) that the
height of a mass of men is determined by totaling the heights of
the men inside the mass.

-- 
John Cowan  www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com  jcowan@reutershealth.com
"'My young friend, if you do not now, immediately and instantly, pull
as hard as ever you can, it is my opinion that your acquaintance in the
large-pattern leather ulster' (and by this he meant the Crocodile) 'will
jerk you into yonder limpid stream before you can say Jack Robinson.'"
        --the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake