From phma@webjockey.net Sun May 05 19:14:19 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: phma@ixazon.dynip.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_3_2); 6 May 2002 02:14:19 -0000 Received: (qmail 96260 invoked from network); 6 May 2002 02:14:19 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.218) by m15.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 6 May 2002 02:14:19 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO neofelis.ixazon.lan) (208.150.110.21) by mta3.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 6 May 2002 02:14:18 -0000 Received: by neofelis.ixazon.lan (Postfix, from userid 500) id 944BB3C482; Sun, 5 May 2002 22:14:16 -0400 (EDT) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" To: Subject: Re: [lojban] Numbers and digits (was Re: bases) Date: Sun, 5 May 2002 22:14:14 -0400 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.2] References: In-Reply-To: X-Spamtrap: fesmri@ixazon.dynip.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: <0205052214140L.01738@neofelis> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: phma@ixazon.dynip.com From: Pierre Abbat X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=92712300 On Sunday 05 May 2002 21:39, And Rosta wrote: > Before I try still harder to get my head round this, John says _dau_ > REPRESENTS not a number but a digit. I presume by 'represent' he > meant 'signify', not 'constitute'. So you're saying that the word > dau represents something, a digit, that in turn represents something > else, a number? > I understand from other replies that "me'o dau" refers to a digit > and "li dau" to a number. But I can't see why we can't say that > the word _dau_ itself means the number 10. For instance, in > "dau no", '160', why can we not say that the number 10 is involved > (on the grounds that "dau no" means '10 times 17 plus no 1s')? "dau" is a number; "li dau" is a sumti, and so is "me'o dau". For example: mi viska dau xirma I see ten horses. *mi viska li dau xirma *I see ten is a horse mi viska dau le xirma I see ten of the horses mi viska li dau le xirma I see a ten against a background of horses (or something like that) mi viska me'o dau le xirma I see a digit ten against a background of horses {mi viska li dau} is a bit hard to explain; perhaps I see ten objects arranged in a triangle with four on each side, and the pattern is more important than what the objects are.