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xorxes:
> la and cusku di'e
>
> > > There is no disagreement about how to do distributive
> > > countables, is there? Doesn't everybody agree that {re djacu}
> > > is "two waters" and that it refers to two quantities of water
> > > with contextual boundaries? (two glasses of water, two lakes,
> > > whatever. My impression is that there is unanimity about this
> > > part
> >
> >Not everybody seems to accept that the boundaries must be
> >intrinsic. Some people seem to think that the individuals can
> >be arbitrarily delimited
>
> I'm not sure I understand what you mean by intrinsic here
> They are arbitrary in the sense that they are purely contextual
> If there are three tables with two bottles of water in each
> table, one person may see six quantities of water and another
> person may see three quantities, and another person a single
> quantity, depending on what one wants to talk about
Yes. And the same goes for three tables with two people at each,
albeit more improbably.
X has intrinsic boundaries if, when looking just at X and not
X's surroundings, you can tell where X ends. Equivalently, X
has intrinsic boundaries if there are criteria for deciding
that there are 3 X and not 2 or 4 X. The people who see six or
three quantities must be additively applying intrinsic
boundaries. The person who sees one quantity may or may not
be additively applying intrinsic boundaries; you won't know
until you know whether they use a Substance gadri or not.
> > > I can't see fractions of Substance making much sense. I think
> > > I see Substance just as Unique
> >
> >"Not all metal is solid"
>
> {me'i jinme cu sligu} for the kind of general statement that
> only appears in Logic books, and {lo'e jinme me'iroi sligu}
> for the more relaxed everyday sense
{me'i jinme} is no good if it is equivalent to {me'i lo}, because
it means "me'i countable units", so changes the meaning. The
me'iroi version is okay, but I would like "Not all metal is
solid" to be equivalent to, say, "Not all of the door is painted
black", which does seem to be potentially different from "The door
is not always painted black".
> > > >"I stepped in (some) water. It was muddy. Then I washed my
> > > >feet with (some) water. It was clean." I see these as
> > > >+specific -intrinsically-bounded. If lVi were the Substance-
> > > >gadri, I'd use lei for these
> > >
> > > I'd use Unique there. Or just {le djacu} if +specific is
> > > required
> >
> >Unique won't do for me, because we're dealing with two different
> >amounts of water; at the very least they are distinct pagbu
> >be lo-Unique djacu
>
> They are two avatars of water. Water being muddy and water being
> clean, just like my feet
Okay, but if they are avatars of water, then water is a category/kind
and we need gadri + predicate meaning "is an avatar of Water",
which gives us "lo-Substance djacu"!
My stepping example should not be different from "I painted some of
the door. It was smooth." = "I painted a certain fraction of the
door". We generally need a way to do "a fraction of" (for all
different possible fractions). I also think that "a fraction of
lo-Unique nanmu" is potentially different from "a fraction of
lo-Substance (of all) nanmu". Lo-Unique nanmu is a single man,
while lo-Substance nanmu is a huge pile of man porridge. "lo-Unique
djacu" looks like a single intrinsically bounded amount of water
(perhaps a glass of water). "lo-Substance djacu" looks like a
a great ocean of water.
> >{le djacu} won't do either, because the
> >water is not intrinsically bounded
>
> If there was no other quantity around, then being the only one
> seems like a sufficient boundary. If there were other puddles,
> then it was bounded
Intrinsic boundaries have to be determinable from the inside;
you're not allowed to sneak a peek outside to check whether
there are other quantities around, or where the non-water
begins. If you see one puddle then it is intrinsically bounded
if, had there been another puddle, you'd be seeing two puddles,
but not if you'd still be seeing just a single quantity of
water.
> >Note that I can't even paraphrase with pagbu, because if I say
> >"le pagbu", I am saying that the pagbu is intrinsically delimited
> >So I need "le-Substance pagbu be lo-Unique djacu", or
> >"le-Substance fraction be lo-Unique djacu"
>
> I probably don't understand the "intrinsic" part
Does this message help? I'm not inventing arbitrary criteria;
I'm trying to elucidate the notion of countability, which is so
familiar from my beloved English.
> >(How do we express
> >fractions like "almost all of"?)
>
> {piji'iro}?
I was thinking {pi da'a}, but what I meant to ask was: How do
we say "I will eat half the apple", and "I ate a certain half
of the apple"? Ah: {si'e}. I had forgotten about it. (I don't
know how it works, though. What is the difference between
{pi mu mei} and {pi mu si'e}? What does {re si'e} mean? Oh,
I see: {re si'e} is "half". But how do we do "two thirds"?)
--And.