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(This is a fricking addiction...)I accept Jordan's dictate and And's attempted compromise, that lojbanmass is vague, not broken. So I disagree with xod and agree with Jordan. Vagueness is unfortunate and should be resolvable, but I do not agree that it is in itself brokenness.
I think Jordan sucks fat balls, incidentally, but that's neither here nor there. D00d, there's a store of chill pills you should check out...
I think I finally have an example that kills the notion "collective == piroloi". Let's get away from pianos and go to the wrestling ring. Appropriately enough. The British Bulldogs (Dynamite Kid and Davey Boy Smith, God rest him) are wrestling Andre the Giant (God rest him too).
A. Dynamite Kid supplexes Andre: .i su'o lo prenrbriticybuldogo ja'a daxri la .andres. .i ro lo prenrbriticybuldogo naku daxri la .andres. .i pisu'o loi prenrbriticybuldogo ja'a daxri la .andres. .i piro loi prenrbriticybuldogo naku daxri la .andres.B. Dynamite Kid and Davey Boy Smith each pick up a chair and start whaling on Andre:
.i su'o lo prenrbriticybuldogo ja'a daxri la .andres. .i ro lo prenrbriticybuldogo ja'a daxri la .andres. .i pisu'o loi prenrbriticybuldogo ja'a daxri la .andres. .i piroi lo prenrbriticybuldogo ja'a daxri la .andres.C. Dynamite Kid and Davey Boy Smith pick up the one chair, one on each side, and start whaling on Andre:
.i su'o lo prenrbriticybuldogo naku daxri la .andres. .i ro lo prenrbriticybuldogo naku daxri la .andres. .i pisu'o loi prenrbriticybuldogo ja'a daxri la .andres. .i piroi lo prenrbriticybuldogo ja'a daxri la .andres.B is an individual plural ("they did it severally"). C is a collective plural ("they did it together"). {piroloi} does not distinguish them. Nor does identity of time or place.
B is expressible with {.e} and {joi} and (I contend) not {jo'u}:
.i la dainamaitkid. .e la deiviboismit. ja'a darxi la .andres
.i la dainamaitkid. joi la deiviboismit. ja'a darxi la .andres
.i la dainamaitkid. jo'u la deiviboismit. naku darxi la .andres
C is not expressible with {.e}, is expressible with {joi}, and is
expressible with {jo'u}:
.i la dainamaitkid. .e la deiviboismit. naku darxi la .andres .i la dainamaitkid. joi la deiviboismit. ja'a darxi la .andres .i la dainamaitkid. jo'u la deiviboismit. ja'a darxi la .andresThe collective, when applied to a bridi, asserts that the bridi is not true of any one referent in isolation, but of the whole bunch. The Lojbanmass is non-specific as to that question. Pragmatics may go hither and thither, but a simple way of saying "severally" and "together" seems to me necessary,
By leaving lojbanmass non-specific and vague as it is, and allowing collective to be expressed as an extra cmavo, disambiguating lojbanmass (since collectives are a kind of lojbanmass), we (a) don't kill usage, (b) don't kill CLL, (c) still allow stuff to be expressible if we want it. To any claim that an individual-vs-lojbanmass ontology is bogus, I now have to answer that if you throw it out, you throw out everything, and I won't risk that. If you allow lojbanmass to be a vague union of the cleaner ontological types, we can still accomodate everyone. And has a compromise position on how Normal Ontologies fit with lojbanmass, though he clearly had to hold his nose to do so. I think those who accent a Normal Ontology should run with it; and I hope that the founder (John) who said Ontologies are culture-specific, and Lojban must always allow you to view things as either individuals or lojbanmass, won't find it objectionable either. The essentialist (for this argument, not xod but Jordan) who think Individuals/Lojbanmasses/Sets are the only real ontology for Lojban can go about their business too, accepting that the formalists are malglico or whatever splitting up their lojbanmasses into subclasses they may reject, but can also tune out of.
This is compromise, this is how we stay one language. Reject this if you will, but this is what I'm trying to do.
If we do not get a LAhE for collective, I will accept using the gismu {malkampu} to express it --- as long as I can append insults to Jordan's football team every time I do so.
One more thing: lojbanmasses are such that you can keep adding people in to them: the mass of Davey and Dynamite strike Andre, but so does the mass of Davey, Dynamite, and Hulk Hogan. Pragmatics allows you to infer it's just Davey and Dynamite; but it would be nice to say explicitly "narrow this down to just the people involved" (which is where I was going with the indivisibles and the rice, I think.)
Using Lojban ontology as a basis --- so reasoning with Lojbanmasses rather than anything else, I think what this means is
{lo malkampu be lei darlu cu darxi .abu}*
is usually interpreted as
"the minimum sized mass of arguers, such that it can be said of them
that 'this mass strikes Andre', does so":
{lo malkampu be lo mlecyrai be ro loi darxi be .abu
cu darxi .abu}**
* [Your football team blows goats, Jordan]
** [Your football team wouldn't know a collective if they tripped on
it, Jordan]
So when I speak of the team striking Andre, I can truly say that this claim is true of the Lojbanmasses [Davey, Dynamite], [Davey, Dynamite, Hulkster], [Davey, Dynamite, Hulskter, Hank Kissinger]. But there is a minimum sized lojbanmass of all the lojbanmasses striking Andre. And pragmatically, that's the one I mean.
So Jordan's "actually carrying the piano" mass is preserved, and disambiguable.
Can I get an amen on any of this? Honestly, I can't lift a finger to do any more Level0 work (let alone lessons --- with masses in lesson 3) until I have a both coherent and fundamentalist story for gadri.
--
Edarh oni oroumene NICK NICHOLAS PhD, French/Italian,
kouraste na mpa"inei, University of Melbourne, Australia
apo ton kosmo entenh nickn@hidden.email
tsi naxei na orinei? http://www.opoudjis.net
--- Dhmhtzh Xouph, _O gerou-Kwstagkh_ (Tsakwniko poihma)