Fwd: If not 1 thousand words for reindeer, then how many?

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu>
> Date: November 29, 2004 10:30:21 AM PST
> To: Seán Fitzpatrick <grendel.jjf at verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: If not 1 thousand words for reindeer, then how many?
>
>
> On Nov 28, 2004, at 9:33 PM, Seán Fitzpatrick asked:
>
>> How many (max., average) words do the various Eskimo dialects have
>> for snow, reindeer, and refrigerator?
>>
>> Is "word" limited to single words like "snow", "powder", and "slush",
>> or can it include multi-word terms, like "wet snow"?
>
> there are (at least) four things to count (here, "vocabulary" takes in
> both words and idiomatic expressions, and "word" is a
> ordinary-language synonym of "lexical item" or "lexeme"; inflected
> forms of a word are not counted separately):
>
> 1.  basic vocabulary (see our discussion of basic color words a while
> back).
>
> 2.  common vocabulary, generally known and used.
>
> 3.  all vocabulary, including compound words, vocabulary reserved for
> specialists or for particular registers/styles, and proper names.
>
> 4.  all expressions, including syntactic phrases.
>
> i can't speak about reindeer and refrigerators, though i believe that
> the reindeer vocabulary is much like the snow vocabulary and that the
> refrigerator vocabulary is very small indeed.  for the snow
> vocabulary, the various eskimo (i'll continue to use this term)
> languages apparently differ in details, but the general story is as
> follows:
>
> 1.  english: 1 basic vocabulary item.  an eskimo lg.: 2 (falling snow,
> snow on the ground).
>
> 2.  english and eskimo lgs.: each, about a dozen common vocabulary
> items.  (see the discussion in pullum.)
>
> 3.  english and eskimo lgs.: each, gigantic vocabulary (thanks to
> specialist and stylistically restricted items), perhaps unlimited
> (thanks to the ability of english to create new compound words and of
> the eskimo lgs. to create new incorporations).
>
> 4.  english and eskimo lgs. (and every other known lg.): each,
> unlimited stock of syntactic phrases.
>
> all the interesting action here has to do with basic vocabulary.
> languages/dialects do differ in the extent of the basic vocabulary in
> some domain -- for basic color words, the range is from 2 to around a
> dozen -- but if it's to be useful, the basic vocabulary can't be too
> large, so the differences between languages are never really dramatic
> but mostly stick within an order of magnitude.  these (relatively
> small) differences are often clearly grounded in cultural differences:
> if you live in a snowy world, you deal with falling snow and snow on
> the ground in different ways; and if you live in a culture that has
> (otherwise similar) manufactured items in a wide range of hues created
> by modern dyeing processes, then color differences are important to
> you.  this is not a particularly deep point.
>
> an even more trivial point is that languages will differ in their
> general and total vocabularies, according to the physical settings
> their speakers find themselves in, the interests of their culture in
> general and of particular occupations within that culture, etc.  such
> cultural differences and specialist vocabularies are of course
> fascinating and worthy of study, but it's hard to see what deep
> lessons about human nature and variation could be drawn from them.
>
> some of the guys i grew up with were obsessed with cars and would
> notice (and remember) details -- make, model, year, specific color,
> optional equipment, etc. -- that i did not not; they had learned to do
> this by long practice.  meanwhile, through an informal apprenticeship
> in gardening, i became an expert on flowering plants and so noticed
> (and remembered) details that escaped them entirely.  we were all
> pretty much at sea in the domains of, say, australian flora and fauna,
> or the weaponry of the european middle ages, or the ethnicities of the
> indian subcontinent.  there's nothing particularly startling about
> that.
>
> cultures overall have their preoccupations -- with baseball, or
> singing, or witches, or intoxication, or hunting, or whatever -- and
> these will tend to show up in an elaboration of the general vocabulary
> in these domains; pretty much everyone learns about these domains and
> practices talking about them, and uses the associated vocabulary to
> help structure their world.  now there *is* an interesting question
> about the extent to which these general preoccupations (and the
> beliefs and knowledge associated with them) "hang together", to make a
> kind of cultural profile; scholars differ as to how much unity they
> see in these cultural complexes.  this is a fascinating question, and
> part of the way we approach it is by looking at vocabulary, but at
> root the issues aren't about language.
>
> arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)
>