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 15:59:27 -0000

--- In [email-masked], Ivan A Derzhanski <iad@M...> wrote:
> "Alfred W. Tueting (Tüting)" wrote:

> 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)

> > /ninba cu meili/ (= leány szép or leányok szépek)
> **************
> Okay, I give up. What language's that in?

Oh, please forgive!!! Of course it *has* to be /nixli cu melbi/ -
trying to remember gismu, I very often get the Chinese words (/
meili/ instead of /melbi/ - and even weird pseudo-gismu like /ninba/
that really looks well Lojbanic, to me also somewhat giving 
a good impression of "girlishness" ;))

> 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?

You might most probably be right: the "inner"(?) semantics of "girl"
causes one to have the impression of "female-young-
beautiful-..." (all in all, a pretty pleasant bundle - with
"beautiful" being a bundle itself for "fair-blue-eyed-smiling-slender-
..."). If I remember right, I've also read the Hungarian term
"széplány" (which could be /melxli/).

BTW, with "lányi" I wanted to express "something generally
referring to girlhood" (I don't think this being a word in real use). 
Your "lányias" looks much better, but I'm not sure if it's the
term for the - narrower - meaning of "girlish", what in this special 
sense usually is given as "lányos".

co'o mi'e .aulun.