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On Wed, Dec 18, 2002 at 03:14:53PM -0000, And Rosta wrote:
> John:
[...]
> > 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
>
> Previously I've dismissed this as bogus. Just because there are by some
> criterion two amounts of water, one can't necessarily describe them
> as "two waters".
>
> But I just had an epiphany (which in lojbanistan often means "I have
> just realized something that other people have probably known all
> along"!). Maybe "lo djacu" is appropriate in exactly those cases where
> English can use "a water", and not just wherever English can use
> "an amount of water". That is really cool, and it also makes me value
> massifier gadri much more, because of course normally we want to say
> "water", not "a water", so if "lo djacu" can only mean "a water", then
> to say "water" we will need lu'olo'i or lu'olau'a.
...."loi djacu". And yes, "lo djacu" means "a (quantity of) water".
Btw, this sudden LAhE fetish scares me. The frequency with which
you change your gadri preferences is astounding. Also, I don't
know what lau'a is supposed to mean.
--
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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