From iad@MATH.BAS.BG Tue Aug 08 00:13:51 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 15791 invoked from network); 8 Aug 2000 07:13:51 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m2.onelist.org with QMQP; 8 Aug 2000 07:13:51 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO lnd.internet-bg.net) (212.124.64.2) by mta1 with SMTP; 8 Aug 2000 07:13:49 -0000 Received: from math.bas.bg (ppp18.internet-bg.net [212.124.66.18]) by lnd.internet-bg.net (8.9.3/8.9.0) with ESMTP id KAA13229 for ; Tue, 8 Aug 2000 10:23:28 +0300 Message-ID: <398FB302.E3B6D3E5@math.bas.bg> Date: Tue, 08 Aug 2000 10:13:06 +0300 X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.74 [en] (Win98; U) 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: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit From: Ivan A Derzhanski 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 _bŕ_ 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 synćsthetic effect: Italian _bimba_ `female child' notwithstanding, [b] makes a word sound old, big and heavy to me. --Ivan