Wiki page BPFK Section: Subordinators changed
On Wed, Aug 25, 2004 at 03:47:08PM -0400, xod wrote:
> >{lo botpi be fo noda} is a valid way of referring to lidless bottles.
> >That's {zo'e noi ke'a botpi fo no da}, i.e. "the obvious thing,
> >which is NOT a bottle with some lid". {lo botpi be fo noda}
> >is {lo na botpi be fo su'o da}.
> >
> >
>
> Do you realize that in usage, people usually use "noda" to mean "lacks a
> lid", and not this contradiction of the entire sentence which you are
> performing, which generally results in something meaningless (applicable
> to camels, stars, etc)
Funny, I thought that in usage people used "noda" to mean "nothing".
I'm pretty sure that it's more useful to keep things like "mi viska noda"
meaning "I don't see anything", than to facilitate talking about lidless
bottles.
It's not meaningless. You might as well be complaining that describing
something as "not green" is meaningless, because that description fits
elephants as well as it fits red things. Something can have a lot of referents
and still be meaningful.
--
Rob Speer