On "word"

[Rudolph C Troike]

Mia,

	Thanks indeed for your wonderful comments and explication of your
approach. Re Ozzie Werner's work, it's sad how quickly efforts go in the
sand.
	But to my main point. You are quite right that especially for
native languages, which -- not being part of the European culture zone --
rarely have clearly segmentable "words" that correspond to the standard
pieces of language assumed by Eurocentricists to be universal. What is
really fascinating is the way in which these received elements called
"words" often have to be "unpacked" semantically, and the components may
be found to have a very different distribution in native languages.

	My favorite example (which could be multiplied a hundredfold from
other languages) is the fact that Navajo has no "verb" corresponding to
English "throw". To a Eurocentricist, this is always astonishing. "What do
you mean, there is no word for 'throw'? This is a simple basic term for
an obvious action." But from a Navajo point of view, it matters first of
all WHAT is being thrown, and then logically expresses the fact that
there is no "atomic" concept of "throw" to begin with, but "throw" REALLY
means "to cause to move". So Navajo (and I assume, Apache) begins with
different verbs for "round object moves", "long object moves", "rope-like
object moves", and then adds a Causative suffix, like hundreds of other
languages, producing "Cause round object to move", etc. So Navajo/Apache
necessarily (and logically) has different verbs for "throw (a ball)",
"throw (a stick)", etc. From that point of view, English and other Euro-
languages are woefully unspecific and overgeneralizing, so that it is
English that is more deficient in lacking lexical resources.

	Again, Mia, thanks again for your fine work and contributions.


	Rudy Troike