Re: plural

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

Jorge:
> One thing is to designate something that is not quite a broda but is very
> similar to one as {le broda}. A very different thing is to designate something
> that is a group of broda (taken as a unit) as {le broda}, especially since
> the obvious way would be to say {lei broda}.

This may seem obvious for a selbri like prenu, but think about "eye", for
example: "le pa [eye]" meaning "one pair of eyes" is fairly natural, &
not necessarily misleading (to be sure whether it is, go and ask a
native speaker of Lojban...).

In fact the problem of what is the unit of broda that we use for purposes
of counting is one I haven't seen addressed. The English gloss of 'kanla'
as 'eye' makes me assume "pa lo kanla" is one eye, but is that necessarily
correct? Could pa lo kanla be a pair of eyes, the eyeage of one person,
with a single eye being "pimu loi pa lo kanla"? The general point I'm
making is that how you delimit one individual broda from another is as
much part of the definition of broda as anything else is; it can't be
taken for granted as self-evident, or inherent in the extramental
world.

---
And