Re: masses - response to Jorge

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@access.digex.net>]

Jorge:
>Subject:      Re: masses - response to Jorge
>la lojbab cusku di'e
>> 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.
>
>I agree with that, you are seeing two of them, the man and the woman.
>If you only see the man's ear and the man's leg, but nothing of the
>woman or the child, then you are seeing one of them, not two of them.
>You'd say {mi viska pa lu'a le nanmu ku joi le ninmu ku joi le verba},
>so your example agrees with what I'm saying.

I don't agree.  In English, let us say one person asks "I am looking for
a man, a woman and a child.  Can you see them?"  If you can see only the
man's ear and leg, but have other evidence (e.g. voices) that tell you
that the others are present, you might indeed be considered to answer
truthfully if you say "Yes, I see them."  We're getting to the
nitty-gritty about masses here, in that the components must display the
relevant properties of the mass (whatever they are, which may be
situationally dependent) in order to "be" the mass.  For example
"loi djacu cu cilmo" implies as a component a mass of water which is
significantly larger than an individual molecule, and in liquid form.

lojbab