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On Wed, Dec 18, 2002 at 06:09:24AM -0500, John Cowan wrote:
> Jordan DeLong scripsit:
> > 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.
>
> Nope. Trust me on this one. The intent when writing the gismu list
> was to make "le djacu" a water individual.
But there's no such thing as a water individual. paunai Are you
trying to tell me that you think x1 of djacu is always a single
molecule?
You mean that "le djacu" is an individual in the lojban sense. It's
actually a quantity of water (i.e. english-style "mass")---I could
refer to an ocean as "le djacu".
> For another example, see the contrast between "bean" and "rice".
> In English, "bean" is a count noun, "rice" is a mass noun. Accordingly,
> the English place structures for "dembi" and "rismi" say "x1 is a bean"
> and "x1 is a quantity of rice" respectively. (A quantity could be as
> little as a single grain).
Ugh, that's pretty malglico. I wish they had either both been made
into mass nouns, or neither.
> Historically, "pease" was a mass noun as well, covering the same space as
> "bean", but it came to be construed as a plural count noun "peas", and
> a new singular "pea" was constructed for it. (Semantic differentiation
> came later, and we can still talk of either black-eyed peas or black-eyed
> beans.)
>
> > 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").
>
> I don't know if you're talking about djacu or gunmi here, but in any case
> a mass of masses is indistinguishable from a mass (unlike a set of sets,
> which is not the same as a set of the elements of the sets).
Not when it is two different conceptions of "mass". "lei djacu"
is a lojban-style "mass" of quantities of water.
--
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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