Re: sumti categories

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

la kolin spuda tu'a mi di'e

> > In general, the
> > more terbri there are with the feature unspecified, the less useful the
> > feature.
>
> Yes, provided you realise that this is not strictly limited to terbri. I
> have indicated that gadri, sumtcita and other cmavo may have these features
> as well.

Yes, I agree, but terbri are the bulk of it.

> One could imagine for example a classification whereby only certain terbri
> could match a particular BAI - not that I think there really are any such
> examples.

I'm not sure I understand you. BAI normally modify (or complement) a whole
bridi (or the selbri, depending how you look at it), not the terbri.

> > Another very useful feature would be 'number'. For instance namcu,
> > se mitre, se cacra, etc, are all +number. Most terbri are -number.
> > I can't think of any that would be %number, in which case this
> > has usefulness = 1. (Maybe those unspecified for set are also
> > unspecified for number, though.)
>
> I think you're right.
> na'ipei mi casnu li re
> "? We discuss the number two"

Ok, I guess it is unspecified, since it would make some sense to say

        le tanxe cu mitre le se casnu
        The box has the discussed length.

> (What about na'ipei for the linguist's "?" (doubtful grammaticality)?
> I'm not happy about it - I suspect we need a question word on the
> jo'a/na'i dimension)

How about {na'icu'i}? (Or {jo'acu'i}, depending which side you favour.)

> > Properties like 'mass' or 'plant' have very low usefulness (in my
> > scale) and so in my opinion it is not so interesting to know the
> > value of these features for every terbri, which will be mostly
> > unspecified anyway.
> >
> I agree with you about 'plant' - but I suspect that such categories will
> be useful for machine checking and parsing - but not about Mass. I
> believe that mass/set/individual is one of the fundamental grammatical
> distinctions of Lojban, and is important even if it is comparatively
> rarely specified for a terbri.

I don't deny that it's an important semantic distinction, but in my
opinion it doesn't play much of a role in compatibility criteria,
because usually the mass and the individual share most properties and
can function in the same places.

> I also want to make explicit a point that I think has been implicit in
> my postings on this subject: I believe that specifying the categories of
> terbri (specifically of tergi'u) makes their meanings clearer, and will
> also show us where there is vagueness.

I agree fully. This is exactly why I think it's important to specify the
categories when they can be specified.

> In particular, it will help us to see where a meaning has been generalised
> by simply relaxing the specification of a feature, or where the gismu
> now applies to two different kind of sumti, but with a slightly different
> meaning.

Exactly. It is not necessarily bad that a selbri has a slightly different
meaning when filled by different categories of sumti, but it's better
if we know that we're doing it.

> For example, I am quite unsure as to the features of 'banxa'. Consider the
> feature +/- concrete.

I would be inclined to say -concrete, since it's the institution, not the
building, that has the banking functions x3.

> A third possibility is that it is unspecified for 'concrete' - I am not sure
> what this would mean, but I guess that for some terbri this can be useful.

Maybe. This depends a lot on which categories one considers, and for some
categories it is difficult to tell whether we are dealing with possibility
3 or possibility 4.

> The fourth possibility, which I would regard as very unfortunate, is that
> it may mean both of the above - in other words, unspecified for the
> feature, but with a different meaning in the two senses.

I bet this is what will happen if the definition is not made clear.

Jorge