Re: Subject: Re: TEXT: pemci

[Jorge Llambias <jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU>]

And:
> Since the collective/distributive distinction only makes sense for
> categories with >1 member, and since we seem to feel that lVi is
> more 'marked' than lV, it is true that lVi pragmatically implies
> plurality. But this is not a grammatical number distinction, of
> course, and it doesn't apply to distributives: lV does not pragmatically
> imply singularity

But it does. A distributed plurality is not a real plurality. There isn't
a significant difference in claiming that the man carries a piano, or
each of the two men carries a piano, or each of the three men carries
a piano. The event is always the same, repeated one, two or three times.
There isn't a significant boundary separating the single event from the
more than one event. I don't think that is the important distinction that
you feel is necessary to make easily. The important distinction is when
the entity carrying the piano is an individual or a group. That is the
distinction that has to be easily made, and it is easily made.

I think that most uses of plural in English correspond to {lei} in
Lojban (or loi when appropriate). Sometimes English does use the plural
marking for the distributive sense, but I think that is the minority of
cases.

> [interestingly, I think we tend to assume in the
> absence of contextual clues to the contrary that lV is referring
> to a single entity (at least I do).

Yes, and I think it is natural to do so, because otherwise we'd be
assuming that the claim is about more than one event, which is not
warranted unless context makes it plain that it is. The simplest
assumption is that one claim corresponds to one event, even if the
grammar allows that it be referring to more than one event.

Jorge