Subject: Re: [lojban] pro-sumti question

From: Adam Raizen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 05 Jul 2002 17:16:38 +0200

la djordan cusku di'e

> You seem to be missing the fundamental point. The are only *two*
> sumti. No matter how many animals are refered to. "le remei" being
> "the pair" being the speaker's description (ala "le") of "the
> referents of a pair of previous sumti". I don't know how much
> clearer it can get than that, so i'm out of this thread unless ya
> address that instead of addressing
one-of-the-many-other-things-which-
> the-speaker-could-describe-as-a-pair.

Well, 'remei' could certainly be a pair of masses, such as a mass made
up of a mass of several dogs and a mass of several cats; however the
original sentence was 'le gerku cu jersi le mlatu', where the dog(s)
and cat(s) are referred to individually. To refer to them as
individuals in one sentence and then implicitly switch to masses in
the next is probably at least misleading. If there were several dogs
and cats, and the original sentence was 'lei gerku cu jersi lei
mlatu', then referring to them all as 'le remei' would be more
plausible. In any case, you could also use a more generic gismu to
refer back, such as in 'le danlu cu tatpi binxo'.

mu'o mi'e .adam.