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

From: "Alfred W. Tueting (Tüting)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 05 Aug 2000 13:05:44 -0000

--- In [email-masked], Ivan A Derzhanski <iad@M...> wrote:

> > In Hungarian, there are indeed means to indicate nouns, namely
> > the article "a" - comparable to lojban /le/ - e.g. "a szép"
> > the beautiful (woman?) or suffixes, like in "szépség"
beauty.
> 
> Correction: _-ság/-ség_ `-ship, -ness' does not indicate a
noun,
> it forms one. You're right about _szép_ `beautiful (woman)'
though:
> this shows how thin the line between adjectives and nouns is in
> Hungarian (much thinner than in most IE lgs, because Hungarian
> adjectives don't inflect for gender). 

You're right. What I wanted to express was that the (abstract) idea
of "szép-ness" is indicated by forming a noun by adding a suffix.

> Still, there is a line:
> `beautiful girl' is _szép lány_, not *_lány szép_ --
the less
> nouny item (beauty) must modify the more nouny one (girlhood).

/meili ninba/ (=szép leány/szép lányok)
/ninba meili/ (is not: leány szép, but somewhat: (egy) leány
szépsége/lányok szépsége, or more common: lányi
szépség)
/ninba cu meili/ (= leány szép or leányok szépek) 
Right again: in "lányi szépség" one has to strip
off/suppress the nouniness of "l(e)ány" by adding an -i and 
enforce the weak 
nouniness of "szép" by adding the suffix.
I'm sure that also *modern* speakers of languages like those are
aware of "things," "qualities", "actions" etc., but had they always  
been?? Grammar firstly is formed by thoughts - and maybe also seems
to have some impact on human thinking.

.aulun.