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On Wed, 18 Dec 2002, John Cowan wrote: > Invent Yourself scripsit: > > > My proposal gives lei an *actual meaning*! Tell me what difference there > > is between "a beer" and "some beer", thus justifying why we need a > > distinct gadri to mark the difference. > > Countability. "How many beers [drinks] have you had?" "How many beers > [vats] are in this cellar?" "How many beers [cans] are in the fridge?" > All these questions make sense and thus want "xu lo birje". > > Where counting does not make sense, then "loi birje" is appropriate. If counting is not desired, lo is just as good, signifying a quantity of one piece. Do you want a gadri to mark that counting isn't necessary? I don't see that distinction as worth marking, not when we have a chance to solidify the meaning of the mass-gadri, on the way to resolving lo'e. This is a fairly important issue, and it seems that non-countability is a relatively minor trait that either never matters, or can be sent to the selbri in those rare cases that it does matter. -- // if (!terrorist) // ignore (); // else collect_data ();