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Re: [lojban] [oz] {lo prenu cu cmamau lo makcu}
la .asiz. cu cusku di'e
The full sentence is
{lo prenu cu cmamau lo makcu poi dy ke'a se slabu}.
{lo prenu} refers to what turns out to be three Munchkins and the Witch
of the North, and dy is Dorothy.
The plausible interpretation is of course distributive,
{ro lo prenu cu cmamau ro lo makcu}.
But, if predicates are to be defined on plural variables, shouldn't the
original sentence mean that the bunch of prenu is, collectively, smaller
than the bunch of makcu?
{lo} doesn't say that they act collectively. It does not rule out the
collective interpretation, but here it's not likely to mean that and
{gunma} would have been clearer.
Is the translation wrong?
In my opinion it's correct.
Or is the sentence ambiguous?
It's vague, but not damagingly so, as you were easily able to tell what
it meant.
If so, how to unambiguously convey the collective interpretation?
For that you could use {loi}/{lo gunma be lo}:
(1) loi prenu cu cmamau loi makcu poi dy ke'a se slabu
"The mass of people was collectively smaller than the mass of
grown-ups Dorothy was familiar with."
And of course (1) means something rather different from the original
sentence.
Keep notice that {cmamau} is unusual in that it is not cumulative in x1.
Also, it is not distributive in x2.
We have these people and we have the grown-ups Dorothy is familiar with.
The former are smaller than the latter. That's as much as my version says.
mi'e la selpa'i mu'o
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