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la xod cusku di'e > The attribute that distinguishes collectives from pluralities is that a > collective has at least one interesting emergent property, which the > speaker is considering. The null property of belonging to a plurality is > unhelpful and should not be considered. (Flames piped to /dev/grice.) I > mean instead something like the ability to carry a piano. But what And was positing here was to consider the collective as more basic than the plurality, so one would use collective always unless you want to emphasize distributiveness. He would use collective gadri even in the case of a singleton. Emergent properties are not the only distinguishing attribute of collective vs. plurality. Purely distributive properties are also a distinguishing attribute. Given a set, there are properties that hold only of each member, there are properties that hold only of the group as a whole, and there are properties that hold both of each member and of the group as a whole. For the special case of singleton sets, the two sets of properties coincide: all group properties are member properties and viceversa. > As Nick as alluded, de-emphasis of this point is what has seduced so many > otherwise virtuous lojbanists into using mass gadri simply for plurals. You are assuming that distributive is the default reading of plurals, but I don't agree that this is the case. I think collective is a more useful default reading, i.e. I don't assume distributivity unless explicitly marked. > Nick, please think about adding this point to your wiki exposition. It should ceratinly be pointed out that the members of a set have some properties that apply only to the members one by one, some properties that apply only to the members as a whole, and some properties that fall in both camps. I don't think we need to regulate how to talk about properties that fall in the third category, given that we are forced to make a choice of talking of them as group or as individual properties. mu'o mi'e xorxes __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com