The arity of a function is the number of terbri that it has. tersu'i are,
in my view, really a classification of a "noun"; tersu'i answers typing
questions such as "Is it an concrete thing or an abstraction? Is it animate
(capable of being an agent)?" etc. Some terbri may accept only certain
arguments that are aligned properly in their type; tersu'i explains what
the typing of a sumti is and thus whether or not it aligns with the
acceptable typing of a given terbri.
I suggest that you use the term "terbrimei" or something of the like for
the expression of the idea of arity. That was pretty much what I was going
to do once I settled on a final choice and got to it.

Comment #2: n-somes versus cardinalities

Curtis W Franks (Wed Feb 3 23:49:51 2016)

krtisfranks wrote: > The arity of a function is the number of terbri that it has. But the other thing is that "mei" does not really specify a cardinality, which is what you want. A number n is associated with "mei" and the result forms an n-set of the sumti specified; well, it is not really a set either- it is a mass, but the point is that the mass has n members but is not the cardinality of the underlying set, which is n. So, the most reasonable deduction from the veljvo of this word would be something like "the mass of sumti types" or "the n-some of argument classes", which does not make much sense. I would suggest conversion of "mei", but the number specification is, unfortunately, not really a terbri of the word and we have no way to access it. You just are not talking about n and you cannot do so with this word and our current grammar. You are talking about the resultant mass itself. It is as simples as that.

Comment #3: Re: n-somes versus cardinalities Ilmen (Thu Feb 4 12:24:33 2016) krtisfranks wrote: > I suggest that you use the term "terbrimei" or something of the like for the expression of the idea of arity. Well I like "terbrimei", so I'll probably make it a synonym of "tersu'imei", so that people can choose the one they prefer. I'm unclear on what a tersu'i is actually; according to some it's just a number (the number of the argument place). That's the kind of situation where having official usage examples along with the official gismu definition would have been very helpful. When I created the word tersu'imei, I was needing a Lojban word for this meaning and had a hard time finding an appropriate letter string, so I've ended up with tersu'imei. As for mei, the x1 is now considered to be a plural, and not a mass/gunma (see the BPFK section for cmavo), so you can say "lo gerku cu ci mei" ("the dogs are threesome"). mi'e la .ilmen. mu'o Comment #4: Re: n-somes versus cardinalities Curtis W Franks (Fri Feb 5 03:57:44 2016) Ilmen wrote: > krtisfranks wrote: > > I suggest that you use the term "terbrimei" or something of the like for > the expression of the idea of arity. > > Well I like "terbrimei", so I'll probably make it a synonym of > "tersu'imei", so that people can choose the one they prefer. > I'm unclear on what a tersu'i is actually; according to some it's just a > number (the number of the argument place). That's the kind of situation > where having official usage examples along with the official gismu > definition would have been very helpful. > When I created the word tersu'imei, I was needing a Lojban word for this > meaning and had a hard time finding an appropriate letter string, so I've > ended up with tersu'imei. > > As for mei, the x1 is now considered to be a plural, and not a mass/gunma > (see the BPFK section for cmavo), so you can say "lo gerku cu ci mei" ("the > dogs are threesome"). > > mi'e la .ilmen. mu'o Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. But the point remains. In my interpretation, it does not reference a cardinality but some sort of collection of some number of elements. I do agree that we needed a word for the idea. I had been sort of thinking on it for a while but never came up with a decent solution.