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At 03:15 PM 12/20/02 +0000, And Rosta wrote:
xorxes:
> la djan cusku di'e
> >Jordan DeLong scripsit:
> > > But "le djacu" *can* refer to any amount of water. "lei djacu" is
> > > a lojbanmass of those individual amounts. A single "le djacu" is
> > > only a mass in the english sense of "mass nouns" and whatnot
> > >
> > > So, if I have 3 bottles of water, they can be individually "le
> > > djacu" or massively "lei djacu". Likewise, if I'm talking about
> > > the 7 oceans, they can be individually "le ze djacu" or lojbanmassively
> > > "lei ze djacu"
> >
> >I agree with every word of this
>
> We all do, I think. Perhaps And will object to "'le djacu'
> is a mass in the english sense of 'mass nouns'".
Yes, and so should John and Lojbab. A mass in the english sense of
'mass nouns' is uncountable. Substance-gadri are supposed to refer
to uncountables and Invididual-gadri are supposed to refer to
countables. ('refer' used in nontechnical sense)
Whether a substance is countable or not depends on how you refer to it. In Lojban, all brodas are both countable in the sense of "persons" and non-countable in the sense of "people", and you distinguish which you intend by the choice of gadri.
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