Components of a mass (was: Quantifiers)

[John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>]

la xorxes. cusku di'e
> I beg to disagree. {re lu'a le nanmu ku joi le ninmu ku joi le verba}
> can't be "the man's ear and the woman's nose". The mass is composed of
> three elements: the man, the woman and the child, and you are selecting
> two of them. Neither the man's nose, nor the man's going to the market,
> nor the man's grandparents are members of the mass. Otherwise, where do
> you stop? Please don't invoke inalienable possession or anything like that.
> Those are possessions of the mass, not its components.

Masses don't have discrete "elements", they have components.  (Sets have
discrete elements.)  The whole purpose of this distinction is that you
can synthesize a mass in one way and analyze it in another.  The mass of
my cats can be dissected into the Max-component and the
Freddie-component; but an equally meaningful dissection is into the
heads-component, the legs-components, the trunks-component, and the
tails-component.  (Each of these components may themselves be viewed as
masses, of course.)
--
John Cowan                                              cowan@ccil.org
                        e'osai ko sarji la lojban.