From Ti@fa-kuan.muc.de Sat Aug 05 08:59:29 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 25460 invoked from network); 5 Aug 2000 15:59:28 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m1.onelist.org with QMQP; 5 Aug 2000 15:59:28 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO jk.egroups.com) (10.1.10.92) by mta1 with SMTP; 5 Aug 2000 15:59:27 -0000 X-eGroups-Return: Ti@fa-kuan.muc.de Received: from [10.1.10.115] by jk.egroups.com with NNFMP; 05 Aug 2000 15:59:25 -0000 Date: Sat, 05 Aug 2000 15:59:27 -0000 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: Beyond Whorf: "things," "qualities," and the origin of nouns and adjectives Message-ID: <8mhdkv+6oui@eGroups.com> In-Reply-To: <398C2610.DA0FEF62@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: 1705 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: > "Alfred W. Tueting (T=FCting)" wrote: > I know _mei3li4_ `beautiful; beauty', but I don't recognise _ninba_ > (nor does my dictionary). >=20 > > /ninba meili/ (is not: le=E1ny sz=E9p, > > but somewhat: [...] l=E1nyi sz=E9ps=E9g) > > /ninba cu meili/ (=3D le=E1ny sz=E9p or le=E1nyok sz=E9pek) > ************** > 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=20 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 "sz=E9pl=E1ny" (which could be /melxli/). BTW, with "l=E1nyi" I wanted to express "something generally referring to girlhood" (I don't think this being a word in real use).=20 Your "l=E1nyias" looks much better, but I'm not sure if it's the term for the - narrower - meaning of "girlish", what in this special=20 sense usually is given as "l=E1nyos". co'o mi'e .aulun.