[Lexicog] Re: Greetings & leave-takings

[Peter Kirk]

On 23/04/2004 16:15, Rudolph C Troike wrote:

>
> ...
>
> P.S. This does not mean that the other language does not have resouces to
> express the concept, but the lexical gap may be due to lack of a reason to
> lexicalize something. Navajo has no established word for "triangle", for
> example (pace Plato), though it can be descriptively expressed for nonce
> purposes. Should a dictionary entry for English->Navajo explain this?
> Would it give a false impression that the descriptive expression was a
> fixed lexical item in Navajo?
>
This last could be dangerous. I just came across a sentence, purportedly
in Turkish translated from English, in which English "the" had been
replaced by two Turkish words meaning "definite article" - because
Turkish doesn't have its own definite article. Well, my
English-Azerbaijani dictionary at least prints the words meaning
"definite article" in italics.

--
Peter Kirk
peter at qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk at qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/



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