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On Tue, Dec 17, 2002 at 03:44:26PM -0500, John Cowan wrote:
> Jordan DeLong scripsit:
> > [1] In cases where individuals don't really make sense for a
> > particular thing, such as water/sand/etc, the brivla are defined
> > so that individual references actually reference masses already (le
> > djacu is a mass, and lei djacu is a mass of masses), which keeps
> > individuals more fundamental.
>
> Au contraire: le djacu is a *quantity*, an *individual*, of water, in the
> same sense that we say "Give me two waters" for glasses, or bottles, or
> jugs, or test tubes full of water. The whole point is that Lojban doesn't
> make brivla-specific distinctions between "mass nouns" and "count nouns";
> everything is a count noun with lV and a mass noun with lVi. There are
> exceptions, like le gunma, where the individual is itself a mass.
A "quantity of water" is what a mass is in english. "lei djacu" is
a mass of quantities of water. Or a mass of masses.
However, as someone (and or nick or xorxes?) was saying, lojban
masses aren't quite the same as it is in english, so calling it a
"mass of masses" is mixing terminology (it's two different senses
of the word "mass").
So; the brivla are defined so that they lojbanic individuals
corrrespond to english-style masses is what I ought to have said.
--
Jordan DeLong - fracture@hidden.email
lu zo'o loi censa bakni cu terzba le zaltapla poi xagrai li'u
sei la mark. tuen. cusku
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