Subject: Re: [lojban] RECORD: containers

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2000 12:47:35 PDT

la pycyn cusku di'e

>The various words for containers are defined with various prepositions 
>before
>the content position. This is irrelevan; in each case the intent is that
>what follows be what the container actually contains (including "nothing" 
>or
>"air" as relevant answers).

"Who Did You Pass On The Road? Nobody" is the title of the
book's chapter on logic. Now, if "nobody" is not someone
that you can pass on the road, then how can "nothing" be
something that a container actually contains? It sounds
all wrong to me. Is it because "bottle" is a noun in English,
while "pass" is a verb, so that bottles remain bottles
even when containing nothing, but passers are not passers
if they pass nobody? But aren't gismu in Lojban supposed
to behave the same way whether related to a verb or to
a noun? Otherwise we run into all sorts of problems, do
two bottles that contain nothing share the same contents,
or do they contain two different nothings?

There is no problem in calling {le botpi} something that
ka'e botpi, or ta'e botpi, even when it is not in the act
of ca'a ca'o botpi, but saying {ta botpi noda} does
not make the claim "that is an empty bottle". It says
"that is not a bottle of something", exactly equivalent
to {ta na botpi da}, isn't it?

Or maybe we are talking of a different kind of "nothing",
not the {noda} which is equivalent to {naku su'oda}?

co'o mi'e xorxes

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