Subject: Isn't everything a noun? (was Countability)

From: Lee Daniel Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2001 17:36:06 -0800 (PST)

> I'll just note that there are two equally coherent but incompatible stories:
> 
> A. "valsi" means "is a single word" (and so on for all countables, remna
> etc.). {lu pa re ci li'u valsi} is false.
> 
> B. "valsi" means "is word(s), is wordage" (and so on for all countables,
> remna etc.). {lu pa re ci li'u valsi} is true. However, "selci" is
> exceptional in that it DOES mean "is a single unit" (according to my
> reading of Lojbab)

I've been absent from the list a while, and I was never that active,
but I've been following the language for a long time and using it to
flex my mental muscles for a while now. I have the book, and I have
the other reference works handy on my server.

I don't see how (A) can possibly be reconciled with the books, or
with general Lojban foundations. The books make a point that predicates
are not "nouns" and "verbs", and that "le/lo" descriptions are not
inherently quantified, so the whole concept of mass noun/count noun is
meaningless. Which one is {blanu}, for instance? It can be used as a
noun, right? Is {le blanu} "the blue thing(s)", or "some blue stuff"?
How can it not be either?

Now, if we _want_ to get down to specifics and measure (or count) things,
then we certainly can: {le blanu poi ke'a grake li cipa ke'u} (The 30
grams of blue stuff). Likewise, {le cipa blanu} (The 30 blue things).
Why should any other predicates like {valsi} be different, just because
it seems "natural" to measure them in units of "units", rather than
grams or meters? Why should we not be able to speak of centimeters of
wordage (as might a typesetter, for example) rather than specific
individual "units" of wordage? The language already favors the "unit"
interpretation of things by having simple quantifiers like {le pa...}
without specific measurement units, and if we want to further emphasize
the countable nature of something, we have {selci} (though its gloss that
x2 is usually a mass-ish kind of thing seems out of place). So why
further limit the meaning of any predicate by including the "unit of"
as part of its definition, when there's no benefit to it, and clearly
some problems?

Am I mistaken that a simple quantifier on any predicate implies that
number of "units" of some kind? For example, couldn't "the 17 tallest
men..." thing be {lo paze xadni clarai be fo lo'i nanmu} (The 17 body-
longest-things, among the set of men) rather than {le'i paze nanmu...}
or something else awkward?

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <[email-masked]> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC