Re: Láadan

On Mon, 16 Dec 2002 14:53:38 -0500, John Cowan <jcowan@...>
wrote:

>Indeed.  I have always loved the Spanish word "novelón": "long, boring
novel".

And, in this precise case, they show another interesting that they share
with Portuguese: it is generally possible to make two different
aumentatives of feminine words, one maintaining the feminine gender, and
the other changing the gender to the masculine:

normal       aumentative     aumentative, masculine

novela       novelona        novelão
mulher       mulherona       mulherão
bolsa        bolsona         bolsão

Giving more room to subtleties - though usually the feminine aumentative
would be more probably understood as literal and the masculine aumentative
in a figurative sense (novelona = big, long 'novela' - not exactly the same
as novel, which would be "romance"; novelão = long, boring,
ridiculous 'novela', or, inversely, terrific, outstanding 'novela').

>The need to lexicalize such a concept is just incredible.
I sometimes have the impression that the logic is reverse: there is a
potential word in the aumentative (or diminutive) of each
Portuguese/Castillian substantive. Eventually, someone finds an interesting
sense for such potential word - and it comes into common use (sometimes it
takes time - I wonder how much time 'avião' [auentative of 'ave', bird =
plane] slept until somebody invented something that could be named with
it...

Luís Henrique