[Lexicog] Swedish language DOES have words for "mind"

Jan F. Ullrich jfu at CENTRUM.CZ
Thu Mar 23 20:08:03 UTC 2006


> Moral: when someone says language X lacks a term for T, be skeptical! 
> They are probably just unfamiliar with language X.

I tend to agree with this.
Oftentimes when people try to find or suggest words missing in a language
they don't realize that such words may not exist in the same part of speech
category. For instance Lakota is a language with very productive verbal
morphology but relatively little morphology on nouns (as is probably true of
most Native American languages). Therefore many concepts that we are used to
perceive as nominal do not exist among nouns, but that does not mean they
cannot be expresses.
For instance 'high blood pressure' is not something traditionally discussed
in Lakota culture, but it can be expressed (we wankal iyayapi hemacheca - I
am such that my blood goes high).
Other people claimed that there are no word for 'please' or 'must' in
Lakota, but there is a complex system of enclitics that can easily express
such semantic notions.

On a related topic:
When working with native speakers on coining neologism I often find it hard
to keep them focused on the beautiful verbal morphology of their language
instead of getting trapped in creating nominal calques or descriptive
translation that come out very long. Does anyone have similar experience?

Jan 






 
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