From Ti@fa-kuan.muc.de Sat Aug 05 06:05:52 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 24618 invoked from network); 5 Aug 2000 13:05:51 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by m2.onelist.org with QMQP; 5 Aug 2000 13:05:51 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO fj.egroups.com) (10.1.10.46) by mta1 with SMTP; 5 Aug 2000 13:05:51 -0000 X-eGroups-Return: Ti@fa-kuan.muc.de Received: from [10.1.10.107] by fj.egroups.com with NNFMP; 05 Aug 2000 13:05:51 -0000 Date: Sat, 05 Aug 2000 13:05:44 -0000 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: Beyond Whorf: "things," "qualities," and the origin of nouns and adjectives Message-ID: <8mh3f8+61vo@eGroups.com> In-Reply-To: <398B2FBB.4C10F0C2@math.bas.bg> User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Length: 1572 X-Mailer: eGroups Message Poster X-Originating-IP: 193.149.49.79 From: "=?iso-8859-1?q?Alfred_W._Tueting_(T=FCting)?=" --- In lojban@egroups.com, Ivan A Derzhanski wrote: > > In Hungarian, there are indeed means to indicate nouns, namely > > the article "a" - comparable to lojban /le/ - e.g. "a sz=E9p" > > the beautiful (woman?) or suffixes, like in "sz=E9ps=E9g" beauty. >=20 > Correction: _-s=E1g/-s=E9g_ `-ship, -ness' does not indicate a noun, > it forms one. You're right about _sz=E9p_ `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).=20 You're right. What I wanted to express was that the (abstract) idea of "sz=E9p-ness" is indicated by forming a noun by adding a suffix. > Still, there is a line: > `beautiful girl' is _sz=E9p l=E1ny_, not *_l=E1ny sz=E9p_ -- the less > nouny item (beauty) must modify the more nouny one (girlhood). /meili ninba/ (=3Dsz=E9p le=E1ny/sz=E9p l=E1nyok) /ninba meili/ (is not: le=E1ny sz=E9p, but somewhat: (egy) le=E1ny sz=E9ps=E9ge/l=E1nyok sz=E9ps=E9ge, or more common: l=E1nyi sz=E9ps=E9g) /ninba cu meili/ (=3D le=E1ny sz=E9p or le=E1nyok sz=E9pek)=20 Right again: in "l=E1nyi sz=E9ps=E9g" one has to strip off/suppress the nouniness of "l(e)=E1ny" by adding an -i and=20 enforce the weak=20 nouniness of "sz=E9p" 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=20=20 been?? Grammar firstly is formed by thoughts - and maybe also seems to have some impact on human thinking. .aulun.