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loi: quantitative claims



So now Jorge and I understand loi differently, as well as all the other gadri. Right now, I'm empathising with pc. :-(

But as far as loi is concerned, the official definition is: anything that can be predicated of an individual {lo broda} can be predicated of {loi broda}, and some extra claims (let's call them mass claims) can also be predicated of {loi broda}.

So {loi cinfo} lives in both Africa and Australia, because individuals do.

I don't see why quantitative and qualitative claims are different in this regard.

So, most {cipni} have two wings; very few have one. The mass claim of {cipni} is that {loi cipni} has zillions of wings. True. But the individual claim of having two wings also holds, no? So just as {loi cipni} lives both in Africa and Asia without contradiction, surely {loi cipni} has both two wings and a zillion wings without contradiction.

So I still think Mr Bird is {loi cipni}. Sometimes you might want to ignore mass claims of Mr Bird; the zillion wing mass statement is not pertinent, only the individual two wing and one wing claims. I'm not convinced you should all the time; Carlson's "kind" of entity (which is his Mr Bird, from which he derives generics) has the mass claim of extinctness or rarity, which you can only make of an entire population, not of individuals. And you would want to say that Mr Dodo is extinct, even though individual dodos were only ever either alive or dead.
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* Dr Nick Nicholas,  French & Italian Studies       nickn@hidden.email *
  University of Melbourne, Australia             http://www.opoudjis.net
*    "Eschewing obfuscatory verbosity of locutional rendering, the       *
  circumscriptional appelations are excised." --- W. Mann & S. Thompson,
* _Rhetorical Structure Theory: A Theory of Text Organisation_, 1987.    *
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