Re: techish replies mainly to Lojbab

[jorge@phyast.pitt.edu]

And:
> {loi} and {lei} are porridgifiers: you add discrete ingredients &
> mash them up so their boundaries vanish - you end up with a porridgey
> blob.

I agree with the description. But the weight of the porridge is the
sum of the weights of the ingredients. Other properties don't add up
so nicely, though. The colour of the porridge will be that of the
ingredients only if they are all mostly of the same colour, otherwise
the resulting colour may be something else.

And {lu'a} gets you the ingredients back from the porridge,
it doesn't get you just any arbitrary porridge fraction.

> Myopic singularization is logically equivalent, I think, to
> {loi ro lo broda},

{loi ro lo broda} is the same as {loi broda}, as far as I can tell.

> but is conceptualized similar to {pa broda}
> or perhaps even {lo pa broda}. The idea is that whereas with
> porridgification you distinguish between individuals but ignore
> their boundaries and emblob them together, with myopic singularization
> you pretend that possibly different individuals are the same
> individual.

Right...

> {mi viska loe prenu} should mean there was a person-shaped
> image on my retina. If I saw 2 people together, I'd say {mi viska
> loe prenu remei}.
>
> The conceptual difference is clear, but the logical difference isn't
> - as I said {loe} is {loi ro lo} (& {lee} I suppose is {lei ro}).

I don't think you can reduce them to masses. {mi nitcu lo'e tanxe}
does not mean that I need the mass of all boxes. It means that there
is a box-shaped image on my need organ, without making any claim
about any or all boxes of the universe. The nice thing about the
myopicity is that then you can say, "hey, I have a box in the other
room, do you want it?" while if I had just said {mi nitcu lo tanxe},
the chances that I was talking about that partricular box are
minimal, so you may very well say "well I have one but I suppose it
is not the one that you mean since you couldn't possibly know that
I have it". The same happens with {mi nitcu loi tanxe}, which in
this case is almost the same as {lo}.

> > I therefore think of lo'e as a displayant of the ideal prototype
> > properties of the class.
> This I feel is a job for a selbri "x1 is a displayant of the ideal
> prototype properties of x2".

Isn't that {ckaji}?

> > "pimudo" implies masses.
> Why? It seems like nonsense to me. All {pi} quantifers seem like
> nonsense to me. I've been following the recent discussion &
> have not spotted a good case for them.

They might have their uses:

        pimu lei remna poi nenri le kumfa cu banzu le nu ky culno ry
        Half of the people in the room are enough to fill it.

> Jorge says:
> > Well, I prefer to say that the mass should be viewed as a new individual,
> > and that the properties of the components may or may not be relevant to
> > the properties of the mass, depending on the predicate.
> I think you'd be better off using something other than {lei/loi} for
> cases where the "mass" is a collectivity, its members considered
> "together, not separately".

What else do you want to use the masses for? There's no difference
between the collectivity and the porridge idea, is there?

> For things like "my books weigh several
> tons" it might be better to say {le girzu be le cukta be mi}. Not
> that {lei/loi} is necessarily inappropriate (though they may be) but
> rather that other locutions might better serve your purpose.

Why? I don't see what they could be used for, if not precisely
for that.

Jorge