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xorxes:
> la and cusku di'e
>
> > > Is the consensus then that "fractional quantifiers" are true
> > > quantifiers? "piro" means "each bit of", and not "the largest
> > > possible bit of" (="the whole")?
> >
> >I don't know if that's the consensus, but Lojbab persuaded me into
> >this view (!!!). There are two reasons. The first is that if
> >fractional quantifiers weren't true quantifiers then they would
> >have to be abolished; that is, given the grammatical environments
> >they occur in, they must be true quantifiers
>
> I'm not terribly persuaded by this reason
I think that pimumei, halves, should be treated similarly to remei,
pairs. In ExSol 4.0 I've tried to do that.
> >The second reason
> >is that it's difficult to see the difference between "each bit
> >of" and "the whole" (and likewise for other fractions), unless,
> >say, the "an x-sized bit of" has extra properties such as integrity
> >of form, and if so then this is something that should be expressed
> >by a selbri
>
> The difference that concerns me is that they behave
> differently with respect to scope issues. "The whole" yields
> a singular term, "each bit of" does not
I can see that, but on that reading of "the whole of X", I can't
see how it differs from "X".
> > > That may be preferrable
> > > as long as there are no default quantifiers so that we can
> > > still refer to wholes
> >
> >I agree
> >
> > > But then how do we say "a large bit of",
> > > given that {piso'i} would mean "many bits of"?
> >
> >{piso'i} would mean "*proportionally* many bits of", and hence
> >would be equivalent to "a large bit of"
>
> They are not really equivalent. "There are many bits of
> ice cream over there" is different from "there is
> a large bit of ice cream over there". In the first
> case, different bits might be of different flavours,
> for example. I agree that a _collective_ of many
> bits would be about equivalent to a large bit, but
> we are not taking {piso'i} as a collective
The ice cream can be of different flavours in "There's a
large amount of ice cream", "There's a lot of ice cream".
You are wanting a notion of 'bit' not as arbitrarily delimited
(whereby "pimu" means "1 in every 2 arbitrarily but equally
delimited and sized bits of") but as having properties such
as spatial integrity. I think that whole fractions -- that is,
parts that have integrity -- must be done by selbri.
> Could we perhaps make the distinction as:
>
> {so'i fi'u}: "proportionally many bits of"
> {pi so'i}: "a large bit of"?
>
> Maybe {piso'i ...} = {loi so'ifi'u ...}?
By "a large bit of", you must mean "a proportionally-large
bit of", right? Otherwise it would just be "poi brada".
But you want fractions that can, as it were, be derived
by a single knife stroke. So to get what you want, we need
a way to say "x1 is a spatial whole consisting of x arb-bits
in every y of the whole substance of x2". Perhaps some sort
of LAhE? That is, LAhE + fraction + broda? The LAhE would
treat the fraction as a whole (not, of course, a whole
broda). I don't think a collectivizer on its own is
enough to do this; you need a collectivizer that collectively
has the property of being whole. What about "lu'a pi so'i"?
--And.