Subject: Re: [lojban] Beyond Whorf: "things," "qualities," and the origin of nouns and adjectives

From: Ivan A Derzhanski <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 04 Aug 2000 09:26:27 +0300

Jorge Llambias wrote:
> la ivAn cusku di'e
> >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.

That's right. It also seems not to be an issue in the Iroquoian
and Salishan (and perhaps in some other American Indian) languages.
In others you can either verb a noun or noun a verb, but not
vice versa: in Nenets nouns conjugate (_xasawa-dm'_ `I am a man'
is no different from _xarwa-dm'_ `I want'), in Ket verbs decline
(becoming event abstractions when they do so).

> 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.

In some cases it may be calqued. I believe there are cases
where it is intrinsic, although Whorf would have disagreed.

> >{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.

It says that cathood and milkhood are more nouny than colour is,
despite the absence of any structural difference in Lojban.
That may be because cats have more relevant properties in common
than black things do, or it may have some other reason.

> >{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?

Serves me right for being lazy and using a very obsolete gi'uste.
It was simply `knife; n.' in the beginning, but I see that it has
now acquired an x2 for the cuttee, and an x3 for the material the
blade is made of.

--Ivan