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la nitcion cusku di'e
More generally, I am trying to derive collective (and later on, substance) from lojbanmass, because in Standard Lojban, lojbanmass is the primitive. If this is hopeless, and it is agreed that collective is a separate primitive, then ipso facto, gadri. Because we've all been saying collectives are a subset of lojbanmass, I think it not hopeless.
What I understand And has been saying, and I think I agree, is that
lojbanmass as defined in CLL is "collective or substance or substance
of collective", but you can't tell which one is meant except from
context. Inner quantifier {tu'o} could indicate pure substance, while
inner {ro} could indicate that it's either pure collective or
substance of collective. The outer fractional quantifier can't
distinguish between individual collective and substance made of
collective because both can be fractional. Fractions of pure collective
correspond to collective of subsets. Fractions of substance collective
can be any part of any member of the set, so you have a weird
combination of individuation and then blending of the individuals'
parts. I do think that extricating pure collective from lojbanmass
is hopeless.
> The collective says
> that the bridi is true of the whole bunch. It doesn't say anything
> about whether it is true of the members of the bunch.
This is where I keep going wrong. If it true of the whole bunch and can
be true of individuals within the bunch ("the duet sings... actually
right now it's just Fred"), then do we have classic lojbanmass, and
joi?
No, the "actually right now it's just Fred" is a correction and negates "the duet sings". You are refining what you mean by "sings" with "actually", so that it turns out that the predicate in its precise meaning does not apply to the duet after all. If you say that the duet is singing, you are making a claim about the duet, period. You are saying nothing directly about the members of the duet. Although we could probably make a lot of assumptions about the members individually if we know that the duet is singing, nothing logically follows. Each predicate behaves differently. "Sings" may require that it applies to at least one of the members, while "procreate" does not require that it applies to at least one of the members. There is no explicit logic of collectives that relates properties of members with properties of the collective.
And if it's true of the whole bunch and no individuals within it
("together", classic sense of piano carrying), we have one kind of
collective and one kind of lojbanmass, right?
So I'm trying to say that, in all 3 scenarios, loi prenrbriticybuldogo
do it, but by playing with the quantification, we can extract an
individual, a collective, and eventually a substance intepretation.
You don't seem to consider lojbanmass as Substance at all. All you're doing is struggling with relationships between properties of individual and properties of collective, and how do the fractional quantifiers relate to collectives, but you are not touching Substance, which requires no boundaries to sort out individuals. If you say "I hear bird singing" you can say that there is a substance "bird" that is singing, but you don't say anything about individual birds.
And I leave with my other Christmas Mass idea: ro pa lu'a piro loi broda = collective? ro za'u lu'a piro loi broda = individual?
To me, {lu'a piro loi broda} is {lo broda}, so those are
{ro pa lo broda} and {ro za'u lo broda}. And asked me to
write something of this on the wiki, but I haven't done
so yet. You and Lojbab constantly use {LAhE <sumti>} differently
than I would understand it. As in:
As in, take the entire Lojbanmass, convert it into an individual,
I take it that {lu'a <sumti>} extracts the individuals that conform
the referent of sumti. You take it that it "converts" something
into an individual.
Similarly, I take {lu'i <sumti>} to be the set whose members are
the referents of <sumti>, but Lojbab says {lu'i abu ce by} is
a set whose members are A and B (i.e., the same thing as plain
{abu ce by}). I take it to be the set whose single member is
the set {abu ce by}.
This is something that the BF will have to clarify too, but
probably you don't want to have to deal with it as yet.
and if a single individual containing the Lojbanmass does it, you have a collective; but if you don't, and have to extract several individuals out of it, you have an individual plural?
la djan ki'ogra li 80
i la meris ki'ogra li 65
i la djan joi la meris ki'ogra li 145
la djan nenri le zdani
i la meris nenri le zdani
i la djan joi la meris nenri le zdani
Obviously there is a relationship between John weighing 80kg,
Mary weighing 65kg and John&Mary weighing 145kg. There is also
a relationship between John being inside the house, Mary being
inside the house, and John&Mary being inside the house. But
what the relationship is depends on the predicate, it is not
a universal relationship between properties of individuals
taken distributively and taken collectively. Different properties
behave differently. You won't be able to give a general logical
rule for relating {la djan broda}, {la meris broda} and {la djan
joi la meris broda}, they are not logically related. After all
{joi} is called a non-logical connective.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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