[YG Conlang Archives] > [engelang group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
Martin Bays scripsit:
> I meant to ask whether it is key that the individuals over which you MS
> have no overlaps (pairwise common parts).
Oh, I see. No, I don't think that matters.
> But couldn't, as John Clifford was I think suggesting, these things
> also be true of the corresponding masses/bunches? If I ask how many
> legs the mass of cats has, the answer might be large, but if ask how
> many legs it has *at the location of a particular cat*, wouldn't it
> make just as much sense to say that the answer to this is 4 as it
> would to say this for the MS?
Well, yes, but suppose the cat is sleeping wrapped around another cat?
Then the present locus of the Cat-mass would have 8 legs. The point
of MS is that it doesn't require you to go through a massification
stage, but directly reduces all cats to a single cat *without* making
a mereological sum first.
> I take it you would say the same of the MS of the union of all cats
> and all dogs?
If by "union" you mean set union, then no, because MSing a singleton
(a set or not) has no effect. If by "union" you mean mereological sum,
then no, for the same reason.
--
John Cowan cowan@hidden.email http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Most languages are dramatically underdescribed, and at least one is
dramatically overdescribed. Still other languages are simultaneously
overdescribed and underdescribed. Welsh pertains to the third category.
--Alan King