WikiDiscuss

WikiDiscuss


BPFK Section: Inexact Numbers

posts: 1912


> > We want {piso'i loi broda} to be "a lot of brodas".
>
> First of all, how is that different from "so'i lo broda"?

{piso'i loi broda} is collective, {so'i lo broda} distributive.

If you want an even more clearcut example, consider {pimu le'i broda}
which is meant to be a new set with half of the members of le'i 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.

I'm defining all piPA the same way, whether it's {piso'i} or {pivo}.

> 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.

Yes, that's how it is now being defined.

> Can you cite an example where the "0.5 brodas" reading is necessary and makes
> sense?

The example in CLL is:

mi citka piro lei nanba
I eat the-whole-of the-mass-of bread

CLL also says:
"Smaller quantifiers are possible for sets, and refer to subsets. Thus
pimu le'i nanmu is a subset of the set of men I have in mind; we
don't know precisely which elements make up this subset, but it must
have half the size of the full set. This is the best way to say ''half
of the men; saying pimu le nanmu'' would give us a half-portion of
one of them instead! Of course, the result of pimu le'i nanmu is
still a set; if you need to refer to the individuals of the subset, you
must say so (see lu'a in Section 10)."

> 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.

As I said, I don't think {piPA} is a true quantifier. It is simply
a shorthand for a description: {lo piPA si'e be lo pa me...}.

mu'o mi'e xorxes




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