Subject: Re: sets, masses, &c. (was: RE: [lojban] Re: [jboske] RE: Anything but tautol...

From: And Rosta <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2002 15:06:43 +0000

>>> Jorge Llambias <[email-masked]> 03/05/02 03:50pm >>>
#la and cusku di'e
#>1. How DO you say "apple" (as in "the bowl was full of apple") in
#>Lojban, without using inherently vague tanru, and without having
#>to define a lujvo for every such mass term?
#
#Since there is no gismu in Lojban meaning "x1 is a quantity
#of apple (the substance)", you can't refer to a quantity of
#apple substance unless you use a lujvo or a fu'ivla. The
#article {loi} does not extract apple material from apples
#or shirt material from shirts. In English you wouldn't
#say "a bowl full of shirt" if the bowl was full of cloth.

No, but you could say "a bowl full of shirt" if the bowl is
full of shirts that have lost their shirtal integrity.

#Some words in English work for both the object and for the
#main substance of that object, but Lojban is more strict
#in that respect. It would seem that {loi} has nothing to
#do with mass nouns in English.

So it seems. It does concern me, though (to the extent that
I care about lojban matters), that there seems to be no way
to talk about an English-type mass of things that have lost
their individuating characteristics but no other. Well, okay,
a lujvo based on marji provides a way, but any lujvo 
ought to be paraphrasable by an expanded phrase
in which the lujvo components each form a separate
brivla.

If we can talk in Lojban about "re djacu", we conversely
should be able to talk about "a bowl full of apple". That is,
if we can countify what is basically a mass (in English), so
we ought to be able to massify what is basically a count.

--And.