The dreaded word "only"

["Mark E. Shoulson" <cbmvax!uunet!CTR.COLUMBIA.EDU!cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu!shoulson>]

   Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1992 12:15:19 EST
   From: John Cowan
 <cbmvax!snark.thyrsus.com!cowan%UUNET.UU.NET@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu>
   X-To:         Lojban List <lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu>

   > .i la alex. romei lei cevni

   Here I disagree on two counts, one minor, one fundamental.  The minor point
   is that "ro cevni" means "ro lo cevni", and therefore the mass form must be
   "loi cevni", not "lei cevni".

Fine.  details.

   But even making this change,

           la alex. romei loi cevni

   still seems to me to mean:

           That-named "Allah" is-an-allsome-of the-mass-of gods

   In other words, there are one or more gods, and "Allah" is a collective name
   for all of them taken as a mass.  Remember that "la alex." is not marked
   for number!

I think I have to side with Nick here.  The sentence means "Allah is all
the god(s)".  This is essentially what we want said.  The fact that Allah
is singular is no more apparent from the Lojban than it is from the
English; we rely (in *both* languages) on the listener to have some
perception of what Allah is considered to be.  You have to specify that
there's only one Allah separately, just as you'd have to in English (tho
the number-marking in English would minimize this to some extent, but not
entirely).

The problem you see here, I think, lieth not within the predication
"romei", but within the massification "loi".  When you massify like this
(and I note that Lojbanic massification is still somewhat mysterious to
me), you (sometimes?) imply an entity of the mass, which may be distinct
from the members, thus leading to the interpretation that "Allah is the
name given to the god(s) taken all together", which is what's bugging you.
Maybe the magic "lu'a" (convert to individuals) cmavo can do something:

la .alex. cu romei lu'a loi cevni
Allah is-an-allsome-of the-members-comprising the-mass-of-things-that-are
god(s)

Oog.  That looks even worse.  Maybe a better perception of massification
would help me out here.

~mark