From jjllambias@hotmail.com Sat May 20 11:07:48 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 2021 invoked from network); 20 May 2000 18:07:48 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by m4.onelist.org with QMQP; 20 May 2000 18:07:48 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO hotmail.com) (216.33.241.26) by mta2 with SMTP; 20 May 2000 18:07:48 -0000 Received: (qmail 82770 invoked by uid 0); 20 May 2000 18:07:48 -0000 Message-ID: <20000520180748.82769.qmail@hotmail.com> Received: from 200.42.155.22 by www.hotmail.com with HTTP; Sat, 20 May 2000 11:07:48 PDT X-Originating-IP: [200.42.155.22] To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] centripetality: subset vs component Date: Sat, 20 May 2000 11:07:48 PDT Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed From: "Jorge Llambias" la ivAn cusku di'e > > > The larger unit does not specify a type of the smaller; > > > it specifies an instance. So rather than `What kind of 11th? > > > May 11th', it goes: `Which 11th? (The 11th of which month?) > > > The 11th of May'. > > > > I don't think I agree that tanru can never cover instance > > specification. But I've always had trouble asking "which?" > > in Lojban. I agree that {le mo broda} just doesn't do it. > >Perhaps `whose?' (`of what larger unit?'), {le ma broda}, is closer. Yes, that's what I thought too, but I think I've changed my mind. I now think that the difference between "which" and "what kind of" is fully and well adressed by the choice of article: {lo mo broda} = "what kind of broda?", and {le mo broda} = "which broda?". This is because an answer with {le} will perforce refer to an instance, and an answer with {lo} will refer to an unspecified member of a kind. le mo mlatu i le blabi mlatu Which cat? The white cat. lo mo mlatu i lo blabi mlatu What kind of cat? A white cat. > > Back to our case, you don't think that > > {le 2000moi nanca ke 5moi masti} could refer to > > {le 5moi masti pe le 2000moi nanca}? > >It might (short of anything else it could refer to), but it doesn't >sound right to me. How about {le le 2000moi nanca ku 5moi masti}? That too. In which case, we are back to YYYYMMDD order: {le le le 2000moi nanca ku 5moi masti ku 20moi djedi} = 2000th year's 5th month's 20th day. > > > [...] [12th-of-the-month]-type_of a [May-ish [day of 2000]]. > > > Looks perfectly tanru-like to me. > > > > That would be something like: > > {le 12moi djedi ke 5moi masti ke 2000moi nanca djedi} > >Something of that sort, yes. > > > You do need the djedi at the end to make sense. But in > > this case you would be saying that the "most elidable" > > information is the day of the month, rather than the year. > >I don't think so. It's the left end you can elide in a tanru, >not the right. A {nixli ckule} is a {ckule}, not a {nixli}. Isn't that what I said? The leftmost component of that tanru is the day of the month. co'o mi'e xorxes ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com