From iad@MATH.BAS.BG Mon Jul 31 23:25:09 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 23682 invoked from network); 1 Aug 2000 06:25:09 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m4.onelist.org with QMQP; 1 Aug 2000 06:25:09 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO argo.bas.bg) (195.96.224.7) by mta1 with SMTP; 1 Aug 2000 06:25:08 -0000 Received: from banmatpc.math.bas.bg (root@banmatpc.math.bas.bg [195.96.243.2]) by argo.bas.bg (8.11.0.Beta1/8.9.3/Debian 8.9.3-6) with ESMTP id e716P4u17882 for ; Tue, 1 Aug 2000 09:25:05 +0300 Received: from iad.math.bas.bg (iad.math.bas.bg [195.96.243.88]) by banmatpc.math.bas.bg (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id JAA19431 for ; Tue, 1 Aug 2000 09:25:04 +0300 X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 Message-ID: <39865F80.2CE46751@math.bas.bg> Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2000 08:26:24 +0300 X-Mozilla-Draft-Info: internal/draft; vcard=0; receipt=0; uuencode=0; html=0; linewidth=0 X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.6 [en] (Win98; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Beyond Whorf: "things," "qualities," and the origin of nouns and adjectives References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Ivan A Derzhanski Jorge Llambias wrote: > la tipitr park cusku di'e > > All natural human languages that I know of [...] > >have (1) lots and lots of words of the type "stick, stone, [...] > >star", (2) lots and lots of words of the type "big, small, long, > >[...] dry," and (3) and lots and lots of words of the type "eat, > >drink, bite, [...] hear." This is true, as an empirical fact, of > >English, German, [...] and Lojban. > > It is true of Lojban, although if we take place structures > seriously in Lojban classes (1) and (2) are much smaller > than in other languages, while most words fall in class (3). > > Only one-place predicates can be of classes (1) and (2). All > others must be of class (3), because they don't refer to a > property or bundle of properties but always to relationships. But so do many of the natlangs' nouns and adjectives. What about such relationships as `father', `friend', `part/piece'? They are nouns (under whatever definition might be applicable) in every lg in the world, but they denote two-place relations. Why is _fire_ a noun and _burn_ a verb, btw? Don't they denote the same part of reality (a process, as it happens)? > Thus the Lojban word {botpi} is not class (2) like the English > word "bottle". It does not refer to the bundle of properties > that make up a bottle, it refers to the relationship that > exists between bundles of bottle properties and bundles of > bottle contents properties. Which is just why it provoked so much debate here. We want to name entities -- entities that are more than bundles of properties -- by stating (the) categories to which they belong. Thus a bottle is not a bottle because it actually or potentially bottles something; it is a bottle because it is a vessel with a narrow neck. --Ivan