[lojban] A use for {me SUMTI mei}

[selpa'i <seladwa@gmx.de>]

The construct {me SUMTI mei} — unlike its sibling {me SUMTI moi} — does 
not see any use. This is because there does not seem be an obvious, 
useful interpretation for it.

As a reminder, this is what the {moi} construct means:

me SUMTI moi: x1 is SUMTI's among x2 sorted by rule/relationship x3.

For example:

(1) ta me mi moi [lo stizu]
    "That is mine [my chair]."

I and some others use this regularly.

This interpretation makes sense, because {moi} deals with ordinality, 
and so you can talk about the SUMTI'th position in a set of things. For 
{mei}, which is about cardinality, it is unclear what it should mean. 
Nevertheless, because {me SUMTI moi} is grammatical, so is {me SUMTI 
mei}, obviously, since both {moi} and {mei} are members of selma'o MOI.

However, today tsani and I discussed a possible use for it, which 
involves using SUMTI not as a "number", but as a unit.

First of all, we can express {PA mei} in terms of {klani}:

x1 PA mei x2 : x1 me x2 gi'e klani li PA lo se gradu be x2

which means "x1 is among x2 and measures PA counting by x2's unit". For 
example:

(2) lo va prenu cu so mei lo tadni
    "Those people are nine counting off students."
    "Those people are nine students."

(One might argue that {zilkancu} could be used in place of {klani}, but 
{klani} is more flexible. After all it's the basic quantity predicate. 
In any case, this isn't central to the idea.)

Now, our idea for {me SUMTI mei} involves using SUMTI in place of 
klani3/zilkancu3, as opposed to the quantifier place (klani2). The first 
approximation was something for something like {lo me lo kabri mei} to 
mean "a cupful/a cup-like quantity".

Since a {me SUMTI MOI} construct is inherently ad-hoc, there doesn't 
appear to be a reason to assume that "a cup-like quantity" necessarily 
refers to the content of a cup as opposed to, say, its surface area or 
its weight. To account for this contextual vagueness, we could look for 
a way to introduce a {pe/ne/co'e} into the definition of {me SUMTI mei} 
if necessary.

Maybe the following is enough:

x1 me SUMTI mei x2 : x1 klani x2 lo se gradu be SUMTI

Also, as {me SUMTI moi} carries a sense of {zo'e noi co'e SUMTI}, so too 
could {me SUMTI mei} carry a sense of {zo'e noi klani co'e SUMTI} or 
similar.

This is all very fresh, so some rough parts will likely have to be 
ironed out and the presentation might seem a bit chaotic, but maybe 
someone can approve of the general idea.

Finally, some examples:

(3) .au mi te vecnu lo me lo xance mei
    "I would like to buy a handful."

(4) cu'u lo pulji lo zdani cu jelca co'u lo nu lo me lo baktu mei be li 
100 cu ba'o zilre'o lo fagri
    "According to the police, the house stopped burning after 100 
bucket-loads of water had been cast on the fire."

(5) lo xabju be lo bi'u nai cmatca cu ta'e kansi'u lo nu bevri lo narge 
me lo vo xance be lo re prenu be'o poi se tarmi lo julne mei li so'o
    "The people living in that village habitually carry together 
several heaps of nuts, each heap being of the size of a net that is 
formed by two people's four hands." (Almost choked on that English)

Sentence (5) tries to demonstrates the kind of case where a -lai lujvo 
would not easily be able to replace {me SUMTI mei}, which is so useful 
for ad-hoc situations.

Impact on past usage: None. {me SUMTI mei} has never been used before. 
This proposal would take a grammatical, but so far nonsensical, 
production of the grammar and assign to it a useful meaning.

mu'o mi'e la selpa'i

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