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For the most part you said what I was trying to say, only better. At 09:46 PM 12/23/02 +1100, Nick Nicholas wrote:
This means collectives, as indivisible n-tuples, are ontologically distinct from masses, and deserve their own *something*.
This implies that we indeed never abandoned the idea that le'i/lo'i are true sets and not n-tuples (something that has been argued so many times that I'm never sure who won any more). I believe that TLI went to the n-tuple version of set description.
I won't even insist on a distinct gadri;
I not sure I have a problem with a distinct gadri as an addition, if it will eliminate confusion about the difference between lojbanmass and n-tuple, and I definitely don't have a problem with a LAhE (the problem with the gadri is that we would need three cmavo corresponding to la/le/lo)
But right now, I can't even see a gismu for the notion of 'collective'.
kampu?
When I say the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is playing, who do I mean? (We're talking English now.) Obviously not the second tuba player playing the kazoo. Obviously not a couple of wind players busking in their spare time. Obviously not just the string players; when that happens, we say "the string section of the MSO", not "the MSO".
Usually. But if they string section cuts a CD, it will probably say "produced by the MSO", and it might or might not say that it is ONLY the string section in the credits - presuming that it is obvious that when the MSO produces a CD with a strings piece that people won't expect to hear a tuba.
In fact we say the MSO is playing for a culture-specific set of criteria, bound up with the history of the orchestra.
We do?
The other thing lojbanmass gains in pragmatics is the fact that it is a
bende --- a group of people that get together for a specific aim. When
we say (in English) that the Beatles wrote the song, we mean not only
that the lojbanmass of the Beatles did it, but that the lojbanmass is
doing something consistent with the aims for with the Beatles were
assembled, and with due authority to do so. If that obtains, we say
'the Beatles' for the lojbanmass {pisu'o loi prenrbitlzi} --- even if
it's just Lennon/McCartney. If that is not the case, then in English we
would insist on all the Beatles being involved -- {piro loi
prenrbitlzi}. So if the Beatles write a song, it can be just
Lennon/McCartney writing a song. But if I kill the Beatles, it has to
be all of them.
But in the probably forthcoming war, when American soldiers kill the Iraqis, they hopefully won't kill even a sizeable fraction of the populace of that country. We can destroy the Iraqi army without killing more than a small percentage, provided that we eliminate the necessary cohesion to call the army an army. But this is still pragmatics.
But I think {jo'u} and {joi} are distinct for good reason,
Yes, and if people simply want to argue for a gadri/LAhE to correspond with jo'u based on simple parallelism, they have a stronger case than all the semantics discussions that have taken place. (If piro loi were sufficient for jo'u, then we would not have needed jo'u - you could have said "piro lu'o X joi Y joi Z")
and we need to be able to reflect that distinction for bunches of stuff. Not even necessarily a gadri (although an extra LAhE will not kill you, for God's Sake). But at least something. In the current regime, there is nothing there to do it. Willing, in fact eager, to be corrected, but I'm not seeing it.
I am moderately convinced that we need to support jo'u more fully. I also can accept some additional LAhE members for some of the other things that have been discussed.
But we gotta have our possibility for disambiguation. That's the Lojban
way. And right now, I sure would like a clear way of saying
"together"...
There may well be an utterly obvious gismu I'm missing; if there is,
I'll consider retracting my support of {lu'oi}, in the interests of
fundamentalism. Ball's back in whoever's court.
kampu, possibly with tense indication of simultaneity. And of course kansa may also be applicable, since you use the word "together". 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