Re: Some thoughts on Lojban gadri

[ucleaar <ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk>]

Jorge to Bob:
> > An ambiguous comment: do you mean `the mass of individuals taken
> > together, like a pile of Christmas trees in the back of a truck', or
> > do you mean `a manifestation of the notion of Christmas tree, by
> > default (but not necessarily) a single Christmas tree'?
>
> The former.
>
> I disagree that {loi tricu} is by default a single tree. In fact it is
> totally ambiguous as to number, and can't even be disambiguated directly,
> because you can only talk about masses in terms of its fractions. This is
> what differentiates it from {lo tricu}, where you can give the number if
> desired, and in which case the claim applies to each of the trees
> separately, which is not true in the case of {loi tricu}.

The term "massification" suggests to me what you understand "loi" to
mean, but the traditional discussion in terms of Trobrianders'
alleged Mr Rabbit leads me to think Bob has it right.

I understand "loi" to involve a kind of denial of differentiation
between members of a category, not so that they all merge together
in a porridgey blob, but so that we cannot tell the difference
between one instance of Mr Broda and another instance.

But if I have this right, a default of "pisuho loi" doesn't make
much sense.

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And