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

["Maxim Katcharov" <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

On 7/11/06, Nathaniel Krause <nathanielkrause@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 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.

I don't suggest that a language would not function without plurals,
but that it's odd that the line was drawn between 1 and 2. Without an
explanation for this, one would think that there are languages out
there that have a pervasive plural that makes itself known between 2
and 3, for example.

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

Elaborate?


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