Re: masses - response to Jorge

[jorge@phyast.pitt.edu]

> >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.

But your comments don't contradict what I said.

> 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."

But you wouldn't say "I see two of tham" if what you see is the man's
ear and leg, would you?

> 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.

Yes, I would take any {lo djacu} to be significantly larger than an
individual molecule. If I say {mi pinxe lo djacu}, "I drink a quantity
of water", that clearly doesn't refer to a few molecules. I am not
disagreeing with what you say. What I said is that {re lu'a le nanmu ku
joi le ninmu ku joi le verba} can't refer to the man's ear and
the man's leg.

Jorge