Subject: Re: [lojban] noxemol ce'u

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2001 20:49:02 EDT

In a message dated 9/16/2001 4:51:28 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> la pycyn cusku di'e
> 
> > > > {la djumbos frica la tamtum le ka ce'u barda}
> > > > {la djumbos frica la tamtum le ka xu kau ce'u barda}
> >
> >Why? The first is "They differ in bigness (in the usual whatever 
> >dimension)"
> 
> To me it requires that they both have the property {le ka ce'u barda}.
> The second one also requires that both have the te frica as property,
> but one has {le ka ce'u ja'a barda} and the other {le ka ce'u na
> barda}. So the two sentences have different meanings.
> 

The only way they can differ in le ka ce'u barda at all is for one of them to 
have it and the other not (unless we go over to fuzzy and one has it .8 and 
the other has it .5 or some such thing). If they they both have it, the 
don't differ in it, but are dunli in it (look at the cases of that), however 
much they may differ in something else. So the two sentences have the same 
meaning, ultimately {gonai la djumbos barda gi la tamtum barda}

<>There is also the ever popular "in how big they are"
>{le du'u [I think, maybe {nu}] makau ni ce'u barda}.  I know you don't like
>this {ni}, but I don't understand any other one, and it fits nicely here as
>does "in size" (le ni ce'u barda}.

Each would be acceptable to me, but not both. They correspond
to the two most common meanings {ni} has.>

Since I think they are equivalent and both derived from {le ni la djumbos 
barda na du le ni la tamtum barda}, I don't even understand what your "two 
meanings" mean. The transformation of one into the other (which seems 
capable of going either way) is general and can always be done, so far as I 
can see (which admittedly does not get much beyond the examples I have 
actually looked at, but there it works every time it is called for). {ni} 
takes a bridi and converts it into a property of a quantity to indicate the 
quantity of that bridi, however measures (and it is often hard to even begin 
to figure that out -- but not in this case, where height or perhaps weight or 
volume all suggest themselves and all give the same sort of reading). In one 
case the quantity is the subject of a larger bridi, generalized by {makau}  
but in the context particularized to the value for one or the other of Tom 
Thumb and Jumbo. In the other the whole is nominalized to refer to that 
quantity in each case. But the underlying structure 
(Quantity(bridi))(quantity) is the same throughout. I am pleased to note 
that you no longer object to {le ni ce'u broda}, or do you see that as 
significantly different from 
{le mamta be ce'u}?