From arosta@uclan.ac.uk Wed Mar 06 07:07:04 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: arosta@uclan.ac.uk X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: unknown); 6 Mar 2002 15:07:03 -0000 Received: (qmail 94089 invoked from network); 6 Mar 2002 15:07:02 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.171) by m9.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 6 Mar 2002 15:07:02 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO com1.uclan.ac.uk) (193.61.255.3) by mta3.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 6 Mar 2002 15:07:02 -0000 Received: from gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk by com1.uclan.ac.uk with SMTP (Mailer); Wed, 6 Mar 2002 14:40:02 +0000 Received: from DI1-Message_Server by gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk with Novell_GroupWise; Wed, 06 Mar 2002 15:06:53 +0000 Message-Id: X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise 5.5.2 Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2002 15:06:43 +0000 To: jjllambias , lojban Subject: Re: sets, masses, &c. (was: RE: [lojban] Re: [jboske] RE: Anything but tautol... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline From: And Rosta X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=810630 X-Yahoo-Profile: andjamin >>> Jorge Llambias 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=20 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.