[YG Conlang Archives] > [jboske group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
On Wed, 18 Dec 2002, And Rosta wrote: > John: > > And Rosta scripsit: > > > > > Our Forefathers spoke of Mr Bird as a mass, but there is loads of > > > confusion here. Lojbo 'masses' are groups = logli 'sets'. The > > > notion of 'group' makes more sense for things that are naturally > > > individuable. For stuff that isn't naturally individuable, > > > the notion of 'mass' is more appropriate, but is not really distinct > > > from Mr Stuff. > > > > What counts as "natural" individuability? > > > > The-mass-of-all-ice weighs billions of tons, but Mr. Ice does not, because > > the (proto)typical instance of ice is much smaller. The Greenland and > > Antarctica ice sheets are not (proto)typical. Yet boundaries between > > ice blobs are rather arbitrary > > I won't say what counts as "natural" individuability, because for the > present discussion I think it is sufficient to say that it is that > criterion that allows one to predict whether a noun in English is > normally used as a mass noun or normally used as a count noun. > Essentially, the issue is whether the category's properties include > criteria for recognizing an instance's boundary and hence recognizing > distinct instances. That's true with water, but beans are referred to with mass nouns, when one can very clearly see individual beans. We are conflating substance-nouns with nouns that exhibit emergent properties by using lei for both of them. This doesn't help us, and in fact, I see no reason why Lojban needs a substance gadri at all. We can very easily refer to any quantity of beans or ice with le. -- // if (!terrorist) // ignore (); // else collect_data ();