[lojban] Re: How to reduce the amount of something?

["Mark E. Shoulson" <mark@kli.org>]

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On 09/30/2009 04:48 PM, chris kerr wrote:
> Someone on IRC asked for a lojban translation of:
> 
> Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially
> reduce the size of its nuclear weapons arsenal, and/or substantially
> reduce and restrict the role and/or missions of its nuclear weapons arsenal.
> 
> I came up with:  .i xusra lo du'u ma'a nitcu lo nu lo mergu'e ga jdika
> lo ni ri ratske xarci ku gi jitro lo zu'o pilno lo ra ratske xarci
> 
> But there is something not right with using {ni} to talk about reducing
> the number of nuclear weapons.

Someone remind me: is it not the case that you can't use {ni} (or any
abstractor) for things like this, because {lo ni...} is equivalent to
some *number* (and you can't reduce 41,291)?  I seem to recall that {ni}
and {jei} had lost most of their utility due to this instantiation in
extension, and that was why we had to bring in {kau}.

If that's so, we need to write this up clearly somewhere on the wiki,
because CLL spends a fair amount of time on {ni} and pals.

~mark
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