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Nick:
> cu'u la djordan
>
> >On Mon, Dec 23, 2002 at 02:20:59AM +1100, Nick Nicholas wrote:
> >> My contention that {mei} means 'collective' should be easily proven by
> >> usage, btw
> >>
> >> Does anyone ever use {remei} when {pamei} would also be true? If so,
> >> mass. If not, collective
> >Yes. If "pamei" is true, you can always take another X and say
> >"remei", "cimei", etc
>
> Please expand. So you're saying that, in scenario B --- where John
> lifts the piano and James doesn't,
>
> lo pamei be lo'i nanmu cu bevri le pipno
> lo remei be lo'i nanmu cu bevri le pipno
>
> or? Because, if a twosome is a lojbanmass, then everything sayable of
> the onesome is sayable of the twosome. If John is blond and James is
> brunet, then the mass {John, James} is blond, and is brunet
I think this is so.
> True, that is intrinsic to lojbanmass. I wish to suggest that (a)
> what's true of lojbanmass (which I think of as substance, but
> whatever) is not true of collective; (b) that we've told people stuff
> about collectives which is actually true of lojbanmasses;
In another message I'm sending out, I suggest that a lojbanmass
is "substance or collective", which makes sense of CLL, I think.
> (c) that
> collectives deserve their own unambiguous way of expression; (d) that
> as much as possible, it should be using existing stuff in the
> language
>
> As you have pointed out (and I'm a dolt for not realising it myself),
> the collective is done in Lojban by {jo'u}. All I'm saying is, if da
> ..e de make up individuals, and da joi de make up masses, then da jo'u
> de make up a collective. And if individuals get the gadri lo, and
> masses get the gadri loi, then collectives should get something. And
> would give them lu'oi; he may yet get it, but I think it less
> disruptive if they get lo romei be lo'i
"*lo" romei" forces a countable interpretation on romei. Which is not
wrong, but we need a way to treat it as Substance too. And we don't
have that yet. "loi romei be lo'i broda" = "loi broda", fundamentistically.
> Jordan, I'm going to badger you in this, but I feel I must. I place
> before you four scenarios: John not James, John and James separately,
> John and James together, pieces of John and James. Here they are
> again. Please tell me if you think your understanding of lojbanmasses
> and gadri is violated in what follows. If you insist that mei is a
> lojbanmass and not a collective, please tell me how to disambiguate
> the collective from the lojbanmass
[my answer: if X is a collective then X is a lojbanmass; the way to
disambuate is that not every lojbanmass is a collective, since
lojbanmass includes Substance also.]
> (I reiterate that, if remei is mass and not collective, it cannot
> work: if {lo remna remei} is a lojbanmass, it is true even if bits of
> John and bits of James do the lifting, or at the least if John and
> not James do it. So in the following, {lo remei be lo'i remna} must
> behave exactly like {lei re remna}, if {remei} is a mass. If you say
> it is, then I concede, {remei} is mass to you, and there is no
> disambiguation. If you accept my usage of {remei} below, as you hint
> by using {remei} as a collective disambiguation, then I deem you to
> be using {remei} as a collective, and we can haggle on the name.)
>
>
> A: John not James
>
> le re nanmu na bevri
true (with CLL na scope rule)
> lei re nanmu ja'a bevri
true
> le remei be lo'i nanmu na bevri
FALSE.
> naku ge la djan. gi la djeimyz. bevri
> la djan. joi la djeumyz. ja'a bevri
> la djan jo'u la djeimyz. na bevri
true
> B: John and James separately
>
> le re nanmu ja'a bevri
true
> lei re nanmu ja'a bevri
true
> le remei be lo'i nanmu na bevri
FALSE.
> ge la djan. gi la djeimyz. bevri
> la djan. joi la djeumyz. ja'a bevri
> la djan jo'u la djeimyz. na bevri
true
> C: John and James together
>
> le re nanmu na bevri
true
> lei re nanmu ja'a bevri
true
> le remei be lo'i nanmu ja'a bevri
true
> naku ge la djan. gi la djeimyz bevri
> la djan. joi la djeumyz. ja'a bevri
> la djan jo'u la djeimyz. ja'a bevri
true
> D: John's and James' severed legs
>
> le re nanmu na bevri
true
> lei re nanmu ja'a bevri
true
> le remei be lo'i nanmu na bevri
FALSE.
> naku ge la djan. gi la djeimyz bevri
> la djan. joi la djeumyz. ja'a bevri
> la djan jo'u la djeimyz. na bevri
true
> Meta-note: it's been a long week in jboskistan: I started recoiling
> in horror at And saying loi was not a mass, and doubly so at Jorge
> bringing up that you can't marry the Beatles. Wierdly enough, now I
> agree with them
Just to be clear, in this message I am accepting for the sake of
argument, that everything that CLL says is a lojbanmass is a lojbanmass,
and trying to make sense of it accordingly.
The solution I actually favour is that favoured by xorxes and xod:
that loi/lei be Collective. But I am ignoring this in this message.
> This is where I think Nora was heading with talk of piano carriers
> and piano carrying supervisor. But I think this is humongously
> distinct from masses, because masses are more like "this much of
> humanity lifted the piano" than "the team lifted the piano." I can
> see cases where they draw close to each other, but I still think
> they're distinct
"lojbanmass = collective or substance" seems to fix everything, IMO.
--And.