Re: [lojban] Re: tersmu 0.2

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

la .xorxes. cu cusku di'e
> Some singular quantifiers have more than one plural version. The
> plural version of "ro" for example can be ro'oi = naku su'oi
> naku, roughly "any number of" or "any", but it could also be the one
> that picks everything together, roughly "all"..

Indeed (Toaq Dzu has both as distinct words). I take {ro'oi} as the dual
of {su'oi} (naku su'oi naku). The other one would be "the highest
number". My impression so far has been that "any" is much more common
than "all". "All" is mostly necessary when counting cardinalities (e.g.
"All shipmates together were seven in number"), where "any" would fail.

> And yet another option is to take plurals as the default.
>
> That could be useful at least for most quantifiers, since they are
> often inadvertently used like that anyway.

I just think that plural quantifiers would make more sense in a language 
with plural reference. Right now Lojban has a strange mix of singular 
and plural predication. We can talk about the students who are 
surrounding a building, but can't claim that some students are 
surrounding the building without bringing in proxy sets or masses (or 
experimental cmavo).

mi'e la selpa'i mu'o

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.