[Lexicog] Re: Words that are absent in particular languages

[billposer at ALUM.MIT.EDU]

Another way in which words can sort of be missing is if they have
different grammatical categories in different languages. Nineteenth century
sources on "primitive" languages often claim that they lack abstractions,
and these claims are often repeated in the non-professional literature
even now. This can seem perplexing to those of us who see enormously
abstract things, like verb roots that mean "to do something by making an abrupt
motion", which in Carrier underlies "to pick (flowers)", "to weed (the garden)",
"to snap (a stick) into two pieces", and so forth. What they often meant was
that the languages they were looking at lacked abstract nouns such as
"love", "honour", "skill" or uninflected verbal forms comparable to English
infinitives and gerunds, "to sing" or "singing". This is actually true of
some languages I know, such as Carrier, but of course one can perfectly well
talk about these things. It's just that one can't use nouns to do it: one has
to use inflected verbs.


Bill


 
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