Re: plural

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

Jorge:
> > > How do you say "the men carried the piano" in Lojban WITHOUT making
> > > the individual/group distinction?
> >
> > I don't think you can avoid making this distinction. BUT "lei nanmu
> > carried the piano" can have a distributive interpretation, since the
> > mass inherits all properties of its members.
>
> If {lei nanmu pu bevri le pipno} can have the distributive interpretation,
> then there is no way to clearly express the group interpretation.

Yes: it was for this very reason that I not long ago suggested stipulating
that masses don't inherit all properties from their constituents. But
that is not how things are at present.

> Let's be a bit more concrete: {lei nanmu pu paroi bevri le pipno} claims
> that the piano was carried only once. How do you get a distributive
> interpretation from that?

I can't. What if it was reroi? It could be distributive then, maybe.

Suppose we see a mass of people "loi prenu". If we say "loi prenu
ku muroi speni koha", are we necessarily describing a polygamous situation
where koha jointly married & remarried the mass of people five times?
Or could it be that koha married five times, serially monogamously,
and that each spouse came from the mass of loi prenu?

---
And