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John: > Invent Yourself scripsit: > > > It depends on what you mean by "mass". In an effort to clarify the > > terminology, we pretty much agree to use "mass" to refer to the > > mass-gadri, and to use "collective" and "substance" for the two distinct > > concepts which have been mistakenly blurred together as the meaning of the > > mass-gadri > > Ah. But I absolutely disagree that that was a mistake. It is the > very essence of Lo??anic thinking about masses that Water, piro lei djacu, > is exactly the same as Monkey, piro lei smani. They are not arbitrarily > divided into "substance" and "collective" based on English/SAE thinking > (I am avoiding "Mr." here, even though JCB and I have used it, because > it seems to invoke confusion.) > > If you can say "There is rice scattered over the floor", you can equally > well say "There is sailor scattered over the deck", pisu'o loi blosazri Absolutely. But you can also say "The two dozen beers formed a 6 foot high column" (imagine stacked beer cans) and "The two dozen sailors formed a 6 yard long column/line". There is no dispute (from me, at any rate) that predicates should not be intrinsically Countable or intrinsically Uncountable. But some of us want to distinguish Substance (in the 'scattered' exx) from Collective (in the 'column' exx). I don't dispute that much that is describable by a Collective is also describable by a Substance, or vice versa, but I think that the two are conceptually distinct enough that they should be lexically distinct. --And.