Re: [lojban] About plural 'ro'

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 10:46 AM, John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:
>   The example was of friends and it might be argued that "is a friend of" can take pluralities in both slots.

I think the relevant predicate was "owns", not "is a friend of". "is a
friend of" was only used as a description. The example was:

   ro lo pendo be mi cu ponse pa karce

Where the referents of "lo pendo be mi" were the members of the set {A, B, C}.

Now, we could use any other sumti there with the same referents, it
doesn't matter much whether "pendo" is a singular predicate or not.
Let's just use "ko'a", where we assign "ko'a goi lo pendo be mi" at
some earlier stage. Then the bridi in question is:

   ro ko'a cu ponse pa karce

If "ro" is singular, that's like saying:

  A ponse pa karce
  B ponse pa karce
  C ponse pa karce

but if "ro" is plural, we are also saying that:

  A&B ponse pa karce
  A&C ponse pa karce
  B&C ponse pa karce
  A&B&C ponse pa karce

With singular "ro": "Each one of them owns a car."
With plural "ro": "Any one or more of them own one car."

It doesn't matter much how "them" got its referents.

The question is, which is the most common thing to say? I think it's
the singular "ro". In English, out of each/every/all/any, only "any"
can really be used (with some effort) as a plural "ro". All the others
seem to be always singular. "All" can be collective, but hardly the
plural universal.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.