[YG Conlang Archives] > [jboske group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
Let me attempt to outline the key features of Collective and Substance.
I find this sort of reductive, essentialist approach easier than
Nick's more discursive approach. Hopefully they're complementary.
None of the below is intended to imply a revision to the taxonomy
of gadri types that the discussion has agreed on.
* The difference between broda Substance and a single individual broda.
* Intrinsic Boundaries (- can be fuzzy) = Countability
- broda Substance lacks intrinsic boundaries = is uncountable
- a single individual broda has intrinsic boundaries = is countable
* divisibility: within reason, you can arbitrarily subdivide broda
Substance and end up with broda Substance, but you can't arbitrarily
subdivide a single individual broda and end up with a single
individual broda.
* Collective
* is a group of two or more broda (seen another way, a single individual
broda would be a group of one broda)
* is not Divisible: although you can divide a group into two groups,
you can't *arbitrarily* subdivide it -- you must subdivide it at
the boundaries between group members.
* may or may not have intrinsic boundaries (but a group of a definite
number of members does have intrinsic boundaries)
[Hence a MOI brivla for Collective would be compatible with both
a Substance gadri and a non-Substance gadri.]
The criterion of Intrinsic Boundaries is, strictly speaking, narrower
than the criterion of countability. For example, revolutions/rotations
are countable, because if you know where one begins then you know
where it ends, but there aren't natural boundaries between revolutions.
Likewise, a group of six can be divided into two threesomes in many
different ways, so there aren't necessarily natural boundaries between
the threesomes, but by virtue of their definite cardinality they are
countable.
A lot more could be said about the definition of countability in
English, and the criteria of Boundedness and Divisibility, but I
don't think we need to go into it here.
Sets may or may not have intrinsic boundaries, but they are Divisible.
--And.