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la and cusku di'e
> >How *do* we do "no fraction, su'o fraction, me'i fraction,
> >ro fraction"? How would you it were done, I mean
>
> I suppose this should work: {no lo pisu'o lo broda},
> {su'o lo pisu'o lo broda}, {me'i lo pisu'o lo broda},
> {ro lo pisu'o lo broda}
Fine, setting aside the issue of which dialect we are speaking
9and hence the meaning of the {lo}.
Yes, I should have said: {no lo pisu'o ko'a}, etc.
This {lo} is quantified so it ends up being distributive anyway.
> What do you think of this tentative idea: piQ turns whatever > it quantifies into Substance. I've been thinking that anything > that can be fractioned has to be a Substance (leaving aside for > the moment my interpretation of piQ with collectives) I think that fraction can be countable or uncountable, just like everything else (e.g. apple). A specific fraction, such as a half, is normally countable because by its very definition it has fixed internal dimensions (defined of course as a fraction of the whole). A nonspecific fraction, such as "portion of", is normally uncountable.
Is "portion" ever uncountable in English? Aren't "portion of", "quantity of", "amount of", etc. ways of making countables out of uncountables?
But we can easily have countable portions, and at a stretch we can have uncountable specific fractions -- "the bowl contained apple-half".
Hmmm... I'll think some more about this. Probably specific fractions and indefinite fractions would work differently.
I think this means that, in Academic Lojban at least, we're better off using mei or si'e than pi for fractions. We then get the following: (tu'o) lo (tu'o) re si'e be pa plise "the bowl contained *apple-half*" pa lo re si'e be pa plise "The bowl contained *half an apple*" (tu'o) lo (tu'o) za'u si'e be pa plise "The bowl contained *apple-portion*" pa lo za'u si'e be pa plise "The bowl contained *a portion of an apple*"
I'm never sure about quantified be-complements. What would
{pa lo re si'e be re plise} mean?
The problem with using piQ is that after lo it functions as inner PA, when we actually want it to function as selbri. I may be wrong, but you want "ro lo pisu'o" to mean "every fraction", but "ro lo re" does not mean "every twosome".
Yes, that's true I suppose. But what other meaning could piQ have?
"pi mu lo pi mu lo plise" would make sense, meaning "a quarter of an apple", but I would prefer to use si'e.
If {pimu lo pimu lo plise} is one quarter, then
{pa lo pimu lo plise} is one half, {re lo pimu lo plise}
is two halves, {ci lo pimu lo plise} is three halves,
and {ro lo pimu lo plise} is every half. I'm not sure
why all the halves should have to be of the same apple.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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