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Re: [lojban] Final state of cenba/zenba/etc.




On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 6:07 PM, selpa'i <seladwa@gmx.de> wrote:
But there is no number in most predicates, for example {xendo} or {melbi}. {ni}'s role then is to introduce a number. {co'e ma kau} can hardly be called a solution.
There's no number pertinent to {xendo} or {melbi}, so there's no reason to introduce one. You can talk about "extent" for those, but that is not sufficiently precisely quantified to get a number.
And that's exactly the kind of {ni} I don't like. I base {ni} entirely on {klani}. Your vague {ni} is unlike anything in the language, but maybe you can show me a Lojban definition of it.
For me it's a primitive, like {nu}, which describes "extent" of bridi for which this makes sense. {.i lo solri lo lunra cu zmadu lo ni ce'u carmi}. {.i lo mamta lo patfu cu zmadu lo ni ce'u xendo}. {.i lo speni cu zenba lo ni ce'u xendo lo panzi be lo speni be vo'a}. etc.



It's not a number, at least not typically
(in my view it never is, since there's no clear rule for when it can and
can't be and whether it is or isn't has a marked impact on semantics.)

For me it's always a number.
Can you come up with an example where there definitely is a number that's pertinent but where the number doesn't fill any place involved in the bridi? (Not necessarily a place of the top selbri, it could be nested). The only examples I can readily think of are (number,unit) pairs, which can be replaced by ma kau in straightforward ways as above. For examples, {ni ce'u glare [kei lo si'o kelvo]} -> {ka ce'u kelvo ma kau}; {ni ce'u clani [kei lo si'o mitre]} -> {ka ce'u mitre (clatre, really) ma kau}.

mi'e la latro'a mu'o

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