On Thu, 23 Mar 2000 15:58:05 -0600, Thomas R. Wier
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Vasiliy Chernov wrote:

<...>
>> Note that in Latin it depends on the gender: _bonus_ and _bona_ (without
>> a 'true' substantive) both mean, roughly, 'a/the good one', but _bonum_
>> has rather an abstract/collective meaning: 'the good', 'everything good'.
>> Same with other IE languages that preserve three genders: German, Greek,
>> Russian, etc.

>In Greek, it's more normal to use the neuter plurals of adjectives to
denote
>those abstract/collective meanings:  _ta dikaia_ = "what is
just"/"justice", vs.
>_he diké_, "justice", which can only be used as an abstract noun.

Yes, but sometimes sg.n. was used this way, too (though I'll have to
check up references for the examples); I didn't touch upon the meaning
of pl., since this is a different story.

BTW, _he dike_ is not the f. of _dikaios_, and _he dikaia_ (IMHO) will
rather mean 'the righteous one' (of a woman). But indeed, f. forms of
adjectives were common in abstract meaning, too, although this usage
seems to me more lexicalized. Still more common in Semitic langs, AFAIK.

>And it's not that Greek and Latin adjectives were considered nouns by
themselves
>by default;  it's that those languages, like English, allowed headless noun
phrases,
>like "the poor" in English:  "The poor you will always have with you."

I don't quite understand this; doesn't _the poor_ translate to simply
_pauperi_ here? And cf. _exercitus victor_ ('victorious army' rather than
'trained winner'), often cited to evidence the lability of the boundary
between adj. and subst. in Latin.

<...>
> I read
an
>exegesis of Locke's _Essay on Human Understanding_ last year where the
>author claimed that because Locke lived with and only understood western
>Indo-European languages where nominalizing is paramount, that was reflected
>in his system of metaphysics which tended to make abstract qualities and
>characteristics real *things*, reifying them without much explaining how
they
>came to exist in the first place.  These characteristics were real, he
thought, but
>just "inhered" in the things to which they were connected, e.g., redness
>(a nominal) inheres in a ball of that color.  I seriously doubt whether a
Locke
>from the Onandaga nation (upstate New York) would have created such a
>system.
>
>The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis pops in the most random places!

And I think sometimes that the whole logic is merely a tendentious
explication of the Greek grammar ;) - not to mention the less formalized
branches of philosophy...

>======================================
>Tom Wier <[log in to unmask]>
>ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: trwier
>"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
>======================================

Basilius