Re: response to jimc on -mei

[John Cowan <snark!cowan@GVLS1.VFL.PARAMAX.COM>]

la .and. cusku di'e

> I understand this. But suppose that Alice is small & John is small
> but the mass of Alice-cum-John is big. Would one handle this
> by "*The whole* of the mass of Alice-cum-John" is big,

Yes, that would work in this case: "piro lu'o la .alis. joi la djan. [lu'u]"
where "lu'o...lu'u" is just functioning as parentheses here.  I haven't
thought about the implications enough to decide whether this is a general
mechanism for distinguishing inherited properties from emergent ones.

> or is
> what I need a function that converts a mass into an individual?
> (So if both Alice & John are small then qua mass Alice-cum-John
> is small, but qua individual Alice-cum-John is big.)

That might work, I'm not sure.  The mechanism for making the conversion
exists:  "lu'a...[lu'u]".

--
John Cowan      cowan@snark.thyrsus.com         ...!uunet!lock60!snark!cowan
                        e'osai ko sarji la lojban.