[YG Conlang Archives] > [jboske group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
la mark cusku di'e
> Me, I still feel that the Kind isn't its instances. That is, when I
> see "a bird", I may not know which one it is, but it is still some
> enumerable bird, not some mythical "Mr Bird". When I want to buy a
> bird, yes, then I'm searching for Mr Bird. This is likely due to
> incomplete understanding of Kind and when it gets used on my part.
There's nothing wrong with being explicit about seeing an instance,
especially when you are talking of a particular instance of seeing
too. The Kind is most useful for general statements, or when we don't
mind identifying different instances. For example:
xu do djuno le du'u lo cipni cu se jvinu makau
"Do you know what a bird looks like?"
ju'o mi dubju'o lo cipni ca lo nu mi viska ri
"Sure, I know a bird when I see it."
[I'm using dubju'o for "x1 knows/recognises x2 (by epistemology x3)"
based on {ko'a djuno le du'u ko'e du makau kei ko'e (ko'i)}.]
Of course, nothing stops us from doing quantifiers if we
feel like it: "For every bird x, when I see x, I recognize x
as a bird", or something like that. But it is more convenient
to talk of Mr Bird the way we talk of John: I know John when I
see him, I know Mr Bird when I see him. In that case we are not
interested in considering the instances, even though in each
instance we see just one instance of Mr Bird and one instance
of John.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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