BPFK Section: Inexact Numbers
On Sat, Oct 02, 2004 at 10:56:20AM -0700, Jorge Llamb?as wrote:
>
> --- Rob Speer wrote:
> > Sanity check. Are you saying that {pa fi'u re} is different as an outer
> > quantifier than {pi mu}?
>
> Right. The proposed definitions are:
>
> PA1 fi'u PA2 sumti = PA1 out of every PA2 of the referents of sumti.
>
> piPA sumti = A piPA fraction of one of the referents of sumti.
>
> > Are you saying that {pi mu broda} means half of one broda, while {pa fi'u re
> > broda} means half of all brodas?
>
> "One out of every two brodas", yes.
>
> > If so, why?
>
> To be consistent with other definitions.
>
> We want masses to be things: {loi broda} = {lo gunma be lo broda}
>
> We want {piso'i loi broda} to be "a lot of brodas".
First of all, how is that different from "so'i lo broda"?
Anyway, I consider "piso'i" to be a non-integer quantifier, for a value
around maybe 0.4, so I would read this the same way I would read a fraction.
If "pimu lo broda" is "0.5 brodas", then "piso'i lo broda" should be "a sizable
fraction of a broda", which is not what you want.
Can you cite an example where the "0.5 brodas" reading is necessary and makes
sense? I can't imagine anything you can actually have 0.5 of, besides a unit of
measure, and Lojban already deals with units of measure differently.
--
Rob Speer