[Lexicog] Lacunae

[Ron Moe]

I've heard of a language that doesn't have a word for 'cloud'. They never
talk about the clouds. This was surprising to me since talking about the
weather is important in my (American) culture. I set up an entire domain for
'cloud' which has 47 English words in it (cumulus, build, billow, storm
clouds). We talk about clouds a lot. I suspect that such examples of an
entire domain missing from a language might be rather rare. When it comes to
particular lexical items with a fairly universal meaning (e.g. the primary
meaning of 'sleep'), I think we need to do a lot of research to determine
what words are universal and what are not. One observation is that
particular words are not universal, but that semantic components are. For
instance in the domain 'feelings/emotions', we could probably say that the
component 'feel good about something' is going to be part of at least one
word in every language. But most words with that component will also have
other components. To find identical complex concepts in unrelated languages
will very likely be rare. For one thing each culture will formulate a
'script' for such concepts as 'forgive'. The script for 'forgive' would
likely start, "You did something bad to me. Because of this, I felt bad
about you..." But it might be more general: "You did something bad to
someone...." The key component might be "I accept your peace offering," or
"I say to you something like this, 'I forgive you.'" What aspects of these
complex cultural scripts are lexicalized will vary greatly from language to
language. It is even possible that a cultural script could be very well
established, yet have no lexical items used for it. However I would expect
the opposite. The more an area of culture is known and established, the more
lexical items will be formed to talk about it.

Ron Moe
SIL International
Phoenix, Arizona

-----Original Message-----
From: Wayne Leman [mailto:wayne_leman at sil.org]
Sent: Monday, April 26, 2004 1:21 PM
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Lexicog] Lacunae


> So how do they forgive, Wayne? Even if they do not have a word,
> I thought forgiving is universal, although often hard to do.
> Are they of the silent kind who express forgiveness by a handshake

yes

> or smoking the peace-pipe together

yes

> or just having social interaction
> action again?
> In some cultures you can give flowers to express that you are sorry and
> ask for forgiveness. But that would not work either among the Cheyenne.
> So how do the Cheyennes express that they have forgiven someone?

And they can use lexical circumlocutions, such as "Let's recognize each
other again" or "Let's shake hands again." Now, one might say, well, that is
how they lexicalize "forgive," and maybe that is right, but I think there is
a difference between a lexicalized word that means "to forgive" and a
circumlocation or metaphorical expression which communicates the concept.
All ways of expressing a concept need to be recorded in a dictionary, in my
opinion, but in this topic thread I have especially been interested in
lacunae for actual words for a particular concept. Perhaps this is a
non-issue, but it seems to me that there is something to the idea that not
all language groups lexicalize the same concepts, nor have lexicalizations
for all possible concepts.

Wayne
-----
Wayne Leman
Cheyenne website: http://www.geocities.com/cheyenne_language

>
> Fritz





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