Subject: From the Wiki: The 17 tallest men

From: Nick NICHOLAS <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2001 15:36:03 -0700 (PDT)

The question on "How do you say the 17 tallest men" came up in the Wiki;
this is what I've proposed, but I think it should be more widely
discussed:

****

Taking a preliminary stab, and using a formal (explicit) rather than
informal expression:

* .i lo nanmu pazemei poi ke'a traji leka ce'u xadni clani

This is a property the 17 hold in common as a unit; so anything said of
them has to be said of a mass. A more colloquial version then might be:

* .i lei paze nanmu poi traji leka xadni clani

Problem is, of course, (a) when you're saying a mass is superlative, are
you saying it relative to all other individuals, or other masses? (b)
since the 17 are a well-defined set, you cannot allow an individual member
of the mass to 'opt out' (the 17mei cannot include the 42moi), which
actually sounds a lot more like a set. A __set__ solution would be:

* .i le'i paze nanmu poi ro lu'a ke'a zmadu roda poi na cmima ke'a kei
leni xadni clani

But sets don't seem to me to work with ''traji'', and I think that if you
have more than a singleton in the x1 of ''traji'', they can reasonably be
presumed to be ranked #1, #2, #3...

-- 
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Nick Nicholas, Breathing {le'o ko na rivbi fi'inai palci je tolvri danlu}
[email-masked] -- Miguel Cervantes tr. Jorge LLambias