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At 01:46 AM 12/21/02 +0000, And Rosta wrote:
John: > Invent Yourself scripsit: > > What I am really > > saying here though, which nobody is addressing, is that we should reserve > > mass-gadri for collectives. And disambiguate collectives from substances, > > because they are very different things > > I don't agree that they are different, much less very different. I think > this view (which you hold) is just as much a Whorfian mind-lock as the > view (which you don't hold) that an individual != a quantity of a substance >> The "Creatures of Lo[i]" view is that when water (which is a portion of Water)> flows over a dam, this is the same situation as when monkey (which is > a portion of Monkey) falls out of a tree All sorts of issues are being mixed up here: 1. Which distinct notions is Lojban to be able to express? 2. Which conflated notions is Lojban to be able to express? 3. Which of these notions does a speaker choose to emply to describe a given thing? Xod addresses (1). You answer by making a point about (3). The one I care about is (1). We don't really have to bother with (3); I am perfectly happy for a Lojbanist to say that the mass of all monkey(s) falls from a tree. But I want to be able to treat Substance and Collective distinctly.
This is why we need to separate the byfy from jboske. byfy is solely about (3), making changes informed by (1) and (2) only when the answer to (3) cannot be determined.
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