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

From: Ivan A Derzhanski <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 08 Aug 2000 10:13:06 +0300

John Cowan wrote:
> On Sat, 5 Aug 2000, Ivan A Derzhanski wrote:
> > 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).
> 
> Hmm. Are there general adj. ordering relations in H. as in English
> ("great green dragon", *"green great dragon")?

I think so. Aren't those ordering constraints universal? I forget
what the story is.

Ivan:
> > In light of {ninmu} `woman', {ninba} makes me imagine
> > an old woman (a granny) rather than a young one (a girl).

John:
> But plainly a "ninba" is a "ba ninmu", no?

Jorge:
> Wouldn't a "ninci" or a "ninvo" be a "ba ninmu"?

Logically, yes. Here is an exegesis of my associations: {ninba}
has {ba} (Russian _ba_ `granny' (abbreviated address form), Japanese
_bâ_ `grandmother', Vietnamese _bà_ dto.) where {ninmu} has {mu}
(Chinese {mu3} `mother', German _Mu(tter)_ dto.); so {ninba} is to
{ninmu} as `grandmother' is to `mother'.

There is also a synæsthetic effect: Italian _bimba_ `female child'
notwithstanding, [b] makes a word sound old, big and heavy to me.

--Ivan