Well, aside from the use mention confusions here (and, I fear, in my remarks as well) this seems an odd position to take. The terms that fill the places of a predicate in a sentence have to refer to something, and what are there but abstracta and concreta? Or do you mean only that what is referred to in a given case must always be of the same sort, always abstract or always concrete. I have agreed already with xorxes that "abstract" is a bad word here, since the event seen, wanted or used is always a concrete individual, though of a different structure than the apple that figures in all of them. And, as xorxes has also noted, there is not purely lexical way to mark the difference between the two, since any common mark can be circumvented. And, indeed, there
really is no difference in the relevant sense, since all the problem that arise with wanting a horse,say, arise with wanting to ride a horse (a point I think xorxes made a long time ago, but who impact I only just today came to understand).
From: Ian Johnson <blindbravado@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sun, October 31, 2010 4:14:24 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: mi kakne lo bajra
Perhaps it is the static typer in me, but I would go so far as to say that it does not make sense for a place in a gismu to be able to be an abstraction or a concrete object. Objects filling a given predicate place have to fulfill certain basic, fundamental requirements to make semantic sense, and I think this is one of them. To me, even though I use "want" in this way in English, a {se djica} being a concrete object is like adding a function to a number.
mu'o mi'e latros.
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