From pycyn@aol.com Sat Jun 17 10:21:54 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 1336 invoked from network); 17 Jun 2000 17:21:52 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m2.onelist.org with QMQP; 17 Jun 2000 17:21:52 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO imo-d04.mx.aol.com) (205.188.157.36) by mta1 with SMTP; 17 Jun 2000 17:21:52 -0000 Received: from Pycyn@aol.com by imo-d04.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v27.10.) id a.ba.6eaf608 (4532) for ; Sat, 17 Jun 2000 13:21:45 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000 13:21:45 EDT Subject: Re: [Re: [lojban] Re: still pondering on le/lei/la/lai...] 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 00-06-17 11:49:14 EDT, tiyuting writes: << So (back to my legally interesting aspect): Is it necessary for /lei etc./ to at least being present to the piano-carrying-event, e.g. supervising the action, or is it sufficient *just to be member of a specific *mass*??? >> Well, the official line seems to be that it is enough just to be a member of the group, but things seem to get complicated by several factors. First, the differences among {lei}, {loi}, and {lai}: {lei} sets up a group, so the assumption is that it sets it up on the basis of some feature common to its members and then all the members share that feature -- participating in the piano moving, say. Further, the default external quantifier on {lei} is set as {piro}, suggesting that all the members are involved in what ever is attributed to the mass. In the case of {loi} (and, I think, {lai}) the underlying class is a "natural" one, not set up for the occasion, and the default quantifier is {pisu'o}, meaning that the whole mass may be credited with what only a submass -- down to a single member -- or maybe even less -- does. Second, different predicates call forth different intuitions: the weight of the mass is the sum of the weights of the members, the acheivements of the mass are the interactive results of the achevements of the members -- or maybe only of some of them, a submass, ignoring those who contribute nothing (but they may be included as well, though they have 0 interactive products), and so on. In this connection, it seems to make an intuitive difference whether the outcome is generic or particular: authors write books but, we usually want to say, an author -- or a small specific mass -- writes a particular book. Third, what a mass does and what is done to a mass call out different intuitions as well, though this is harder to document clearly, mainly because the distinction is not too clear to begin with. However, it keeps coming up in cases where nothing else seems to work.