Quoting regua <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
Now, my questions is: which of these definitions is correct? How many
sumti can 'melbi' take?
I'm pretty sure the answer is four. The baselined gismu list seems to
be pretty official:
http://www.lojban.org/publications/wordlists/gismu.txt
In practice you're not usually going to see more than one or maybe two
places filled in melbi, but there is also a semantic difference.
Places which are listed as official places of the gismu (as opposed to
extra places added with BAI cmavo or fi'o) have a role in showing the
semantic terrain that the gismu covers.
The fact that the second place is an observer tells us that being
melbi isn't an objective quality; it's different to different
observers. The third place being a property tells us that there is
more than one different way of being melbi, and that something can be
melbi in one way while being non-melbi in a different way. The fourth
place being a standard means that even when a particular observer is
judging a particular quality of melbiness, it's not a black & white
thing, but more that things are judged relative to each other or
relative to various possible ideals.
Those sumti are there deep underneath in the word & inform what it
means, but in practice they are almost entirely subservient to the
first place, the thing that's beautiful. We mostly want to drag those
implied places silently around while applying dabs of melbiness here &
there: "lo melbi gerku" -- the beautiful dog, or "ta melbi" -- that's
beautiful.
But then the other places are there hidden away, so when someone says
"ta melbi" and you disagree it's possible to say: "melbi ma sai" --
beautiful to who?!?! The possible uncertainty as to who considers
what to be melbi is intrinsic to the concept, in a way it may not be
to English "beauty" (depending on who you ask).
mu'o mi'e bret.
