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Jordan: > On Tue, Dec 17, 2002 at 02:12:10AM -0000, And Rosta wrote: > > xod: > [...] > > > I think that loi cipni has a billion wings, but Mr. Bird only has 2 > > > > Me too. So even though Nick is frustrated by the disagreement, there's > > also a lot of agreement going on > > I don't see why numbers of things should be special compared to > other things for masses. If we can say things like "loi gerku cu > jmive gi'e morsi" we should also be able to say "loi gerku cu se > tuple vo da gi'e se tuple so'i da" > > So I guess I agree with Nick on that Actually, on further thought, I think that if x is a wing of y, then y is an individual creature, not a group of creatures. So I'd say that loi cipna has 0 wings, but contains billions of wings. You say you don't see why numbers of things should be special. Well, the first thing for us to do is consult our intuitions about collectives to see whether numbers if things are special. If they are special, we can then do what linguists, philosophers and cognitive psychologists do, and try to work out *why* they are special. Of course, you can say "I don't see why numbers of things should be special. And nobody has been able to explain it to me. So let numbers of things not be special to loi". The upshot of that is that loi fails to be a proper collectivizer, and people either ignore the baseline or abandon loi and use experimental cmavo instead. --And.