Unlocking the secret sounds of language

[Scott DeLancey]

On Tue, 9 May 2006, Richard Smith wrote:

> I'm no linguist so I have a question.
> Does the "lack" of a word for something mean it does not exist for a people?
> I know where my "knee" is...but because the place behind the knee is unnamed
> (except for some surgeons lingo) Does that place not exist?

Lack of a word means that the concept isn't something speakers of the
language talk about much.  Your knee is something you need to talk about--
it gets bumped, you kneel on it, you break things over it, you use it
to nudge doors open--but the back of the knee isn't something that comes
up much in conversation, so there's no need for a word for it (as you
say, unless you're an orthopedic surgeon of some such).

For example--in a Himalayan language I'm studying I recently came across
a word that means 'the feeling you have when you're on a crew or team
and somebody else keeps slacking off and not pulling their weight'.
Now, this, I'm sure, is a feeling we're all familiar with.  But can you
think of a word for it?  We don't have one. English, compared with a lot
of other languages, doesn't have a lot of vocabulary for feelings.  Why?
Well, it's not something we talk about.  In fact, it's *notoriously*
something we don't talk about, it's one of the things that speakers of
other languages often comment on about English.
     Notice we do have ways of talking about the situation, but they're
all about that guy.  I've got plenty of names to call him (goof-off,
goldbrick, slacker) and ways to refer to what he's doing (not pulling
his weight, slacking off), but in English I don't have a word for how
the situation makes me feel, because in English feelings aren't something
we talk about.

Scott DeLancey
Department of Linguistics
1290 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-1290, USA

delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu
http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html