From pycyn@aol.com Thu Jun 15 09:08:51 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 31142 invoked from network); 15 Jun 2000 16:08:25 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by m3.onelist.org with QMQP; 15 Jun 2000 16:08:25 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO imo-d03.mx.aol.com) (205.188.157.35) by mta3 with SMTP; 15 Jun 2000 16:08:23 -0000 Received: from Pycyn@aol.com by imo-d03.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v27.10.) id a.66.49f9cc9 (4233) for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 12:08:16 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <66.49f9cc9.267a5970@aol.com> Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 12:08:16 EDT Subject: Re: [lojban] containers To: lojban@egroups.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: AOL 3.0 16-bit for Windows sub 41 From: pycyn@aol.com In a message dated 00-06-15 11:24:14 EDT, evgenis writes: << wonder if this difference in wording (for/of/with/containig) is deliberate and serves to convey different meanings. Are we speaking in case of bottle (botpi) only of the bottle itself, and of only potential contents? How do we say then "a bottle of wine"? Respectively, when we use "bucket" (baktu) are we speaking about an amount of water contained in a bucket? How can we then refer to an empty bucket? I would prefer to have a uniform place structure for all kinds of containers. It is rather difficult to memorize the distibution of "for/of/with". >> Another good one! In all these cases, the predicate describes the object as such, not as a measuring unit (pe'i, if you're checking). Most of the "for" cases are for things that have different shapes or sizes depending upon probable contents (bottle, drawer, box, pot). For the others I have no good stories about the different prepositions (including none at all for "with"). It does not help matters that the typical contents of many of these containers are things that in Lojban have the "a quantity of..." definition, i.e., English mass nouns that beg for a container or other quantized. I would take all of the words in question to mean "containing ...". The various kinds of bottles, say, can best be handled by tanru rather than sumti place:{djino batpi} by its shape, but {batpi lo djino} in use.