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la nitcion cusku di'e
So this is what X means by quantifiable: there is something one can start to count with delimited bits of substance and numbers (if one has decided on a ve memzilfendi --- has aportioned it into bits, and therefore individuals), there is nothing to start to count with stuff, it's just stuff. Yes?
Yes. The view I held until before this discussion was that in Lojban we never deal with Substance, always with amounts of stuff. What constitutes an amount is determined contextually for amount-of-stuff predicates like djacu, but other than that they behave like other predicates as far as quantification goes. I find the idea of using tu'o as inner quantifier to talk about true Stuff useful. This is not aleph-1 bits of stuff, it is just undivided stuff as stuff.
>>The bits of substance that I've been talking about (anything from "the >>top quarter of" to {pi ro}) are, I would claim, extensionally defined >>notions of substances. > >I agree. You're not really talking about Substance as such but >a quantifiable derivation ("bits of substance"). That bits >can physically contain or overlap other bits is not really >relevant to their quantifiability. Quantifiablility is not >the same as countability. And whensover we put a fractional quantifier or divide up anything, we introduce quantification in somethat that was otherwise just sludge and unquantified.
Right.
OK, I think I see. No chopping, just sludge. Still call that a Kind.
That was my first impression too, but it's not quite right. Human-sludge is different from Mr Human, and a similar but harder to grasp distinction has to apply between Water-sludge and Mr Amount of Water. The difference is that Mr Amount of Water is much more context dependant than Mr Human. mu'o mi'e xorxes _________________________________________________________________MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus