From jjllambias@hotmail.com Wed Aug 02 16:58:43 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 31134 invoked from network); 2 Aug 2000 23:58:43 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m1.onelist.org with QMQP; 2 Aug 2000 23:58:43 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO hotmail.com) (216.33.241.81) by mta1 with SMTP; 2 Aug 2000 23:58:43 -0000 Received: from mail pickup service by hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC; Wed, 2 Aug 2000 16:00:58 -0700 Received: from 200.42.119.35 by lw8fd.law8.hotmail.msn.com with HTTP; Wed, 02 Aug 2000 GMT X-Originating-IP: [200.42.119.35] To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Beyond Whorf: "things," "qualities," and the origin of nouns and adjectives Date: Wed, 02 Aug 2000 23:00:57 GMT Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Message-ID: X-OriginalArrivalTime: 02 Aug 2000 23:00:58.0140 (UTC) FILETIME=[85208DC0:01BFFCD5] From: "Jorge Llambias" la ivAn cusku di'e >Yes, Lojban does have a slant for arities greater than one. >To my mind, however, the main thing is not the arity, but rather >the ability of the word to be an argument, an attribute or a >predicate; or if its ability is not an issue, then the likelihood >of its being one of those things. Its ability is obviously not an issue in Lojban, as brivla can play all roles and it is not very difficult to make up contexts where one could use any given brivla in any role. As for likelihoods, the problem is how to determine to what extent the likelihood is intrinsic to the concept and how much of it is calqued from English and other languages, even the English keyword used for the gismu can have a dominant effect. >{le mlatu cu pinxe le ladru} >sounds more plausible to me than {le xekri cu pinxe le blabi}, >although both may be equally unambiguous descriptions of the same >situation. Yes, to me too, but I'm not so sure what that says about those concepts. > > Right, but we don't have in Lojban a word for the vessel with > > a narrow neck, the closest thing we have is a word for the > > relationship that such vessels tend to have with other usually > > liquid objects. > >Yes, -- and that is a rather unexpected state of affairs {sfofa} >too could be a bin- (or more) -ary predicate (`x1 is a sofa sat on >by x2 ...'), but it isn't. Nor is {dakfu} `... knife cutting x2'. >Bottles seem to be singled out. But {dakfu} is that, isn't it? Lojbab said that we should pay no attention to the difference between "for contents", "with contents", "containing", that exists in the gi'uste definitions for different containers, they all should be taken as "containing", so I assume that "for cutting" in {dakfu} should be taken as just "cutting", too. co'o mi'e xorxes ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com