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On Mon, Dec 23, 2002 at 02:09:42PM +0000, Jorge Llambias wrote:
> la djorden cusku di'e
[...]
> > > (I want to be sure whether we agree what the outer quantifiers
> > > mean before we discuss how confused I might be about them.)
> >
> > .i'e
>
> Ok. Now, when we have three men carrying the piano together,
> such that none of the men carries it on their own, what we
> want to say is {piro lei ci nanmu cu bevri le pipno}.
Depends.
> {pisu'o lei ci nanmu cu bevri le pipno} is also true,
> because {pisu'o} can be {piro} in particular, but it
> is not what we want to say in that situation because it
> is misleading. It is like saying "I ate some of the
> cake" when I ate it all. It is true but misleading.
Ok, but "I ate all of the cake" is just as weird unless there was
some question as to how much you would eat. You'd just use an
individual with "I ate the cake".
> In most cases when we use {lei}, like in the case
> of the piano carriers, we mean {piro lei}. That's
I don't know who "we" is, but I certainly don't.
> why I consider {piro} has to be the default. Using
> {pisu'o lei} in those cases, while making a true
> statement, is not what we want to say. That one
> of the men may be a supervisor changes nothing.
Yes it does. The supervisor didn't carry the piano. He just stood
around. So "piro" would be false.
> He is one of the team and it is the whole team,
> supervisor included, that does the carrying. We
I disagree. "The team did the carrying"---that means that some
parts of the team did the actual carrying.
If a player on a soccer team is sitting on the bench, he's still
part of the mass of his team. However, if you say "piro lei <soccer
team> won", you'd be saying something false. Similarly "piro lei
<soccer team> sat-on-the-bench" would be false, but pisu'o would
be true.
Note that this is why piro is almost never useful, because it is
effectively individuals except that you get a few of those
mass-properties.
> still want {piro} in that case. It would be false
> to say that {piro lei re nanmu cu bevri le pipno}
> if the supervising by the third man was an
> integral part of the carrying. {pisu'o} is true
Not according to the book;
> because it allows the {piro} case, but it is
> the wrong quantifier to use because it also suggests
> {pime'iro}, which is often false in those cases.
Ok all of the above is just you restating your premise. I see no
real support for this, and the book's story makes much better sense
to me.
--
Jordan DeLong - fracture@hidden.email
lu zo'o loi censa bakni cu terzba le zaltapla poi xagrai li'u
sei la mark. tuen. cusku
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