Subject: Re: [lojban] How many?

From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <[email-masked]>
Date: 8 Sep 2000 18:52:03 -0000

>Cc: [email-masked]
>From: Peter Moulder <[email-masked]>
>Date: 05 Sep 2000 01:11:35 +1100
>User-Agent: Gnus/5.0803 (Gnus v5.8.3) Emacs/20.6
>
>"Mark E. Shoulson" <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>> xo da se finpe
>> 
>> (or {xo da finpe} for "how many fish are there in the universe?")
>
>Incidentally, I think that `xy. finpe' does not necessarily imply that
>x physically exists in the world; otherwise there would be no way of
>talking about non-real fish (because `xy. finpe .ije xy. naku zasti'
>would be self-contradictory).
>
>So `ci'i' (infinity) can be a correct answer to `xo da finpe', at least
>if one understands the tense to be merely existential. (My understanding
>is that unspecified tenses in Lojban are ambiguous similar to zo'e rather
>than existential like DA, in which case `vo' can also be a correct answer
>to `xo da finpe'.)

Mmm... I'll not get into the question of non-existent fish, but when you
consider that Lojban predicates are considered to hold true in
timeless/potential senses, your answer is right. How many fish
are/were/will there be in the universe? {ci'i} may not be right, but then
it may. You'd have to be specific and say {xo da ca'a finpe}: how many
really-and-truly are fish. That's what ca'a is for.

~mark