From iad@MATH.BAS.BG Sat Aug 05 07:31:44 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 6526 invoked from network); 5 Aug 2000 14:31:43 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m1.onelist.org with QMQP; 5 Aug 2000 14:31:43 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO lnd.internet-bg.net) (212.124.64.2) by mta1 with SMTP; 5 Aug 2000 14:31:41 -0000 Received: from math.bas.bg (ppp59.internet-bg.net [212.124.66.59]) by lnd.internet-bg.net (8.9.3/8.9.0) with ESMTP id RAA26952 for ; Sat, 5 Aug 2000 17:40:45 +0300 Message-ID: <398C2610.DA0FEF62@math.bas.bg> Date: Sat, 05 Aug 2000 17:34:56 +0300 X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.6 [en] (Win98; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Beyond Whorf: "things," "qualities," and the origin of nouns and adjectives References: <8mh3f8+61vo@eGroups.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit From: Ivan A Derzhanski "Alfred W. Tueting (Tüting)" wrote: > --- In lojban@egroups.com, Ivan A Derzhanski wrote: > > Correction: _-ság/-ség_ `-ship, -ness' does not indicate > > a noun, it forms one. [...] > 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. Yes, unlike say Chinese, where all you do is convert the word to the other class, a process that affects its syntactic behaviour, though not its shape. > > 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) I know _mei3li4_ `beautiful; beauty', but I don't recognise _ninba_ (nor does my dictionary). > /ninba meili/ (is not: leány szép, > but somewhat: [...] lányi szépség) And {nixli melbi} would be somewhat like _leányias szép_, `girlish(ly) (in whatever sense) beautiful (thing/person)'. How often is a language likely to need to express that? Much less often than `beautiful girl', don't you think? And in either case, why? What can make girlhood nounier than beauty? Is it the fact that girls as a category share more relevant features than things of beauty in general? > /ninba cu meili/ (= leány szép or leányok szépek) ************** Okay, I give up. What language's that in? --Ivan