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At 03:20 PM 12/19/02 +0000, Jorge Llambias wrote:
la djan cusku di'e >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. Yes, but hopefully with the collective meaning = "there are sailors scattered over the deck" and not with the substance meaning "there is sailor goo scattered over the deck".
That is a question of "relevant properties". If the sailor goo scattered on the deck has the relevant properties of sailordom for the context, then all is fine. If you boil rice to a pulp and spread rice goo all over the floor (or grind it down to rice flour) then you risk the same problem with substance-rice that you do with substance-sailor.
If you divide {pa rismi} in many parts, you normally end up
with {so'i rismi} (assuming you started with a big enough
{pa rismi}. But if you divide {pa nanmu} in many parts,
you don't end up with {so'i nanmu}, no matter how big the
pa nanmu was.
This is just arguing about how small you can divide the mass before it loses its relevant emergent properties and thereby ceases to be a mass.
In that sense, there can be said to be a class of brodas such that when you divide pa broda you end up with so'i broda, and other brodas for which you don't.
John (and I) are arguing, I think, that this subdivision of brodas is a SW restriction that is not necessary.
But that's like saying that there is a class of brodas such that when you melt lo broda you still have broda and other brodas for which you don't.
If such classes of broda exist, then membership of a particular broda in a class is something that can/must be asserted, and not necessarily assumed. Lojban supports Salvador Dali, and his flowing watches.
lojbab -- lojbab lojbab@hidden.email Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org