Subject: Re: [lojban] kau -- What does it really mean?!

From: Pierre Abbat <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 17:29:26 -0400

On Tuesday 13 August 2002 19:04, Avital Oliver wrote:
li'o
> Now, the question is, using this interpretation of "kau", how would I
> discuss possible answers to questions which aren't sumti? For example, how
> would I say "The number of people is large", other than "le prenu cu
> so'imei" -- A construct similar to "le xokau prenu cu barda", but that
> would be nonsence, since the fact that there are N people can not be large.

"le xokau prenu cu barda" means "the number of people who are large", except 
that it's a sentence.

> One might suggest using sets, which I have some disagreements with (both
> considering Jorge's ban on sets, and xod's thoughts, saying that a set is
> not large -- it's cardinality is large). But this doesn't matter. What I'd
> expect there to exist is something similar to a cmavo, that we shall call
> "kaui", that can be used instead of "kau", but instead of creating a sumti
> meaning "the fact that ...", we would just get the answer. Thus, I could
> say: "le du'u xokaui prenu cu barda". Some people have suggested using "ni"
> instead of my "ledu'u xokaui", but that's not what I understand of "ni". I
> understand that "leni blanu" means blueness. The same people would say that
> "blueness" is "leka blanu", which I disagree with, but this is not part of
> this discussion.

"leni blanu" and "leka blanu" both mean "blueness", but the former is a 
quantity and the latter a quality.

phma