* Sunday, 2011-10-30 at 17:17 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 3:23 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> >> If "lo cinfo cu ckape .i ko na jbibi'o ri" confuses Moople, then
> >> "lions are dangerous, don't go near them" should confuse him just as
> >> much, since they have the same logical structure: "ko'a broda .i ko na
> >> brode ko'a".
> >
> > Yes, but in english he'd know that "lions are dangerous" refers not to
> > the bunch of lions in sight (which would have to be "these lions are
> > dangerous") but to lions in general. It seems that the same does not go
> > for your {lo cinfo cu ckape}.
>
> I agree that plain "lions" in English doesn't work well as a
> demonstrative, and that "lo cinfo" could be "lo vu cinfo" just as well
> as "lo fe'e su'o roi cinfo",
That does raise (again) the possibly important question of where it is
that a bunch of lions cinfos.
Obvious answers:
(i) everywhere at least one of them zvatis;
(ii) at some specificish locale, such as their centre of mass;
(iii) everywhere.
(ii) is icky.
Under (iii), {lo vi cinfo} wouldn't work.
So I guess you're working with (i)?
> but surely "these lions are dangerous, don't go near them" covers both
> "lions of this kind are dangerous, don't go near them" and "these
> particular individual lions are dangerous, don't go near them".
That's technically true, and I had forgotten about this feature (bug?)
of english... perhaps I have been giving english more disambiguating
credit than it's worth...
Martin
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