LL-L "Language varieties" 2003.12.05 (03) [E]

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From: Theo Homan <theohoman at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2003.12.04 (02) [E]

>From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
>Subject: Language varieties

>Theo (above):

> Although my opinion is not needed, I agree with you,

>My life may not depend on your opinion, Theo, but I
sure value it.

> It is the choice of the words and the handling of
them that gives the
>value.

>That may be well and good, but how *do* you ensure
the choice and
>handling
>are fail-safe and optimal?  What *are* "basic" words?
 Usually people
>try to
>think of what may have been basic in "primitive"
cultures, such as
>"fire,"
>"hunt," and parts [...]

----------------------
Ron,

All very true.
I myself would be inclined to stick to words like:
hand, foot, head, ear, eat, and so on.

I remember to have been once on the website of a
computational linguist in the usa, and he knew how to
handle figures and statistics. It was something like
this: Take any two languages in the world [selected at
random] and you will find a huge number [he had
calculated how many] of words with about a similar
sound and similar meaning;
and when you play around with meaning [woh, I found
similarities: mouth in x = food in y] the number will
explode.

vr.gr.
Theo Homan

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language varieties

Thanks, Theo.

> hand, foot, head, ear, eat, and so on.

But, you see, even such supposedly basic words can and do undergo various
semantic shifts, sometimes radically so, and many of them eventually get
lost.  Furthermore, you will find that in many cultures and languages only
one word is used for both 'to eat' and 'to drink' (i.e., *'to ingest'), and
one word covering both 'food' and 'drink', often also including 'medicine'
(i.e., *'ingested matter to keep one's body going').  Similarly, many
languages (e.g., many Altaic ones) do not distinguish between 'foot' and
'leg' and between 'hand' and 'arm' (doing so by way of modification only
when absolutely necessary).  So, might we not need to keep our minds open to
the possibility that the invention of more specialized terms took place
relatively late when linguistic divergence was already quite advanced?

My basic point is that it is often difficult to determine what words are
truly universally basic.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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