Re: Subject: Re: TEXT: pemci

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

And:
> [Indeed, in one respect I think the desire to avoid being malglico
> has gone full cirle and ended up very malglico indeed: I am thinking
> of the lack of any convenient way to make the logically and
> typologically important distinction between singular and plural
> (suhore is a bit of a mouthful) - my reading of this is that it
> results from a desire to be unEnglish, even though number distinctions
> are widespread among languages. Apologies if my guess at the history
> of this is wrong.]

At the risk of invoking the ire of the gods, I will say that in my
opinion Lojban does distinguish between singular and plural, albeit
not exactly like English.

That is the basic distinction between {le} and {lei}. (Also between
lo and loi, but it is easier to see it in the specific case.)

        le ci nanmu cu bevri le pipno
        Each of the three men carries the piano

is really three statements in disguise, each of them describing an
event for a single man.

        lei ci nanmu cu bevri le pipno
        The three men carry the piano

is the statement in plural form. It describes a single event, of
three men carrying the piano.

If you simply say {lei nanmu cu bevri le pipno}, you could in principle
be referring to a single man, but what for? If it was really a single
man you would just say {le nanmu cu bevri le pipno}, so at least
pragmatically {lei nanmu} is the plural form.

If you simply say {le nanmu cu bevri le pipno}, you could be describing
more than a single event, (more than one man and/or more than one piano),
but then for each of the events described, you are talking about a
single man and a single piano. So in some sense, it is the singular case
repeated many times. Pragmatically, in the absence of more context,
I will take it you are referring to a singular man and a singular piano.

Of course, having a sort of plural doesn't make Lojban any more
English-like than if it didn't have it, and if people don't like
calling this a plural I don't mind, but I think it is.

Jorge