colonel@gloria.UUCP (George Sicherman) (10/21/84)
[This is not a sentence.] > This struck a choard. I remember a PBS TV show about the Australian > aborigines and the difficulties studying them. There is apparently no > way to phrase "what if" types of questions. The anthropologists had to > tell them a thing was so, get their response, and then tell them it was > not so. > > This would seem to me to be a serious "expressive deficit". Any > aborigines on the net care to verify this? A general semanticist named Harrington whose first name I have forgotten said that he knew an Indian who was fluent in his tribal language and also in ours. Harring- ton asked the Indian if there were such words (meanings) as "could" and "should" in his Indian language. The Indian was quiet for a while, then shook his head. "No," he said. "Things just are." Barry Stevens, _Don't Push the River_ (1970) Expressive deficiency? Or a more accurate modeling of reality? See also the "Counterfactuals" dialogue in Hofstadter's _Godel, Escher, Bach._ -- Col. G. L. Sicherman ...seismo!rochester!rocksanne!rocksvax!sunybcs!gloria!colonel
dan@aplvax.UUCP (Daniel M. Sunday) (10/23/84)
<> It is well-known that the Hopi (American Indian) language only has a present tense, there are no past or future tenses for their verbs. Surely this is a language deficiency.
steven@mcvax.UUCP (Steven Pemberton) (10/24/84)
I find this talk of 'deficiencies' a little disturbing. A deficiency is in the ear of the listener, surely. If a language doesn't have a particular feature, then that is only because the speakers of that language don't need it. If they perceived a need for it, something would develop. As an example, 'standard' English doesn't distinguish between 'you' singular and plural, while many languages do. Is this a deficiency of English? Most English speakers would probably say not because they get along fine as it is. However certain dialects of English apparently found it a deficiency, because they went and invented a plural version (y'all in USA, youse in England). A similar example is the difficulty in English of saying something in a gender-neutral way (Chinese has a single word for 'he or she' for instance). Many English speakers find this a deficiency, and so are developing ways to express these things.
rob@ptsfa.UUCP (Rob Bernardo) (10/25/84)
> <> > It is well-known that the Hopi (American Indian) language only has a > present tense, there are no past or future tenses for their verbs. > Surely this is a language deficiency. Similarly Indonesian does not have tenses either (nor aspect or person or number). However, the meanings that tenses, etc. express in English et al. get expressed with separate words in Indonesian. In fact English doesn't even have a real future tense, e.g. no prefix/suffix added to verb root to denote future; English uses a separate word 'will' to denote futurity, as well as phrases like 'be going to'. Indonesian has a whole battery of adverbs to take the place of verb tense. The lack of a syntactic feature does not necessarily mean a communicative deficiency. And in any case it is not clear that if a language cannot communicate some certain meaning it is deficient - maybe the native speakers of that language have no need to express that meaning. Do Congolese Pigmies need to have a word for snow? Actually that's a slightly different issue than tense, because 'snow' is an object whereas tense is has a more abstract significance. use the separate auxiliary verb 'will' with the verb root. -- Rob Bernardo, Pacific Bell, San Francisco, California {ihnp4,ucbvax,cbosgd,decwrl,amd70,fortune,zehntel}!dual!ptsfa!pbauae!rob
mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) (10/26/84)
============
It is well-known that the Hopi (American Indian) language only has a
present tense, there are no past or future tenses for their verbs.
Surely this is a language deficiency.
============
If I remember correctly, Whorf pointed out that the Hopi don't really
have verbs. Rather, they differentiate between events that last longer
than a cloud (nouns) and shorter events (verbs). Presumably they also
distinguish between events you know about (past+present[which is now past
because you are talking about it]) and events you don't know about
(counterfactuals and/or future). Does anyone know more directly about
this?
The nature of the Hopi verb/noun tense/factual distinction is interesting
because Whorf used the non-distinction between noun and verb to
argue that the Hopi probably see the world in a different way.
--
Martin Taylor
{allegra,linus,ihnp4,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt
{uw-beaver,qucis,watmath}!utcsrgv!dciem!mmtdick@tjalk.UUCP (Dick Grune) (10/26/84)
> > From: dan@aplvax.UUCP (Daniel M. Sunday) > Newsgroups: net.ai,net.nlang > Subject: Re: natural language deficiencies? > It is well-known that the Hopi (American Indian) language only has a > present tense, there are no past or future tenses for their verbs. > Surely this is a language deficiency. It is well-known that the English language only has a genderless substantive, there are no masculine or feminine forms for their substantives. Surely this is a language deficiency. It is well-known that the English language only has a sizeless substantive, there is no diminuitive form for their substantives. Surely this is a language deficiency. There is no (reasonable) way to render Dutch: leraresje (little female teacher) into English. Dick Grune Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and my name isn't Richard.
steven@mcvax.UUCP (Steven Pemberton) (10/26/84)
> There is no (reasonable) way to render Dutch: leraresje (little female > teacher) into English. There is no way, reasonable or not, to render Dutch 'gezellig' into English. This is also SURELY a language deficiency. (Since there's no way to render the word into English, I'm afraid I can't explain to non-Dutch speakers what it means, except to say that it's an adjective describing social situations, and is desirable.) ((For Dutch readers: I find the same problems with 'eng', though it's not so widely discussed as gezellig. But perhaps discussion on that should be restricted to nlnet distribution.))
lwall@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Larry Wall) (10/26/84)
In article <6115@mcvax.UUCP> steven@mcvax.UUCP (Steven Pemberton) writes: >I find this talk of 'deficiencies' a little disturbing. > >A deficiency is in the ear of the listener, surely. If a language doesn't >have a particular feature, then that is only because the speakers of that >language don't need it. If they perceived a need for it, something would >develop. I find this talk of deficiencies a little disturbing too, but for different reasons. Almost all purported "deficiencies" indicate not that a language cannot communicate a particular idea, but that the purported linguist has not studied the language well enough. Languages are not differentiated on the basis of what is possible or impossible to say, but on the basis of what is easier or harder to say. That is not to say that a given language is easier or harder than another--languages on the whole are of approximately equal complexity, but the complexities show up in different places in different languages. This is known as the waterbed theory of linguistics-- you push it down one place and it pops up somewhere else. >As an example, 'standard' English doesn't distinguish between 'you' singular >and plural, while many languages do. Is this a deficiency of English? Most >English speakers would probably say not because they get along fine as it is. >However certain dialects of English apparently found it a deficiency, because >they went and invented a plural version (y'all in USA, youse in England). Here in California, it's "you guys". And no, they don't all have to be male. They don't any of them have to be male. Of course, "standard" English has "all of you", "you folks", "you ladies", etc., and a bunch of vocative phrases to indicate plurality. "Gentlemen, start your engines!" >A similar example is the difficulty in English of saying something in a >gender-neutral way (Chinese has a single word for 'he or she' for instance). >Many English speakers find this a deficiency, and so are developing ways to >express these things. One does have a certain amount of difficulty, doesn't one? But just because an English speaker runs up against this problem, it doesn't mean they have to reinvent the wheel, do they? English already has both a formal and an informal way to express the idea. One doesn't have to misunderstood if they don't want to. Of course, if one mixes up the formal with the informal, they very well might be misunderstood. (For you clunches out there, the previous paragraph is self-referential.) Larry Wall {allegra,burdvax,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,sdcsvax}!sdcrdcf!lwall
aeb@turing.UUCP (10/27/84)
> It is well-known that the Hopi (American Indian) language only has a > present tense, there are no past or future tenses for their verbs. > Surely this is a language deficiency. It is well known that the English language only has active verb forms and has to resort to circumlocution to render passive or reflexive forms. Surely this is a language deficiency. It is well known that the English verb does not have diminutive forms so that separate words are required to render the diminutive meaning. Surely this is a language deficiency. Cf. Danish: de smaaskaendtes 'they quarrelled a little with each other' ( ... bickered ...) -- Andries Brouwer -- CWI, Amsterdam -- {philabs,decvax}!mcvax!aeb
mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) (10/28/84)
======================
There is no way, reasonable or not, to render Dutch 'gezellig' into English.
This is also SURELY a language deficiency.
(Since there's no way to render the word into English, I'm afraid I can't
explain to non-Dutch speakers what it means, except to say that it's an
adjective describing social situations, and is desirable.)
======================
Why is there *no* way? Do you mean to imply that English-speakers cannot
experience this social situation, or just that it would take a complex
phrase or paragraph to get the idea across. If the former, then there
must be more difference between the Dutch culture and all English-speaking
ones than I have observed. If the latter, then why not try and see
where you get. I was under the impression that "gezellig" was close
to cosy, comfortable, unconstrained and home-like. Is this anything like?
--
Martin Taylor
{allegra,linus,ihnp4,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt
{uw-beaver,qucis,watmath}!utcsrgv!dciem!mmtcolonel@gloria.UUCP (George Sicherman) (10/29/84)
[stofzuiger] > There is no way, reasonable or not, to render Dutch 'gezellig' into English. > This is also SURELY a language deficiency. For the benefit of those few net readers who don't know Dutch, I recall a drawing by the Dutch cartoonist "Peter" of two men in shirtsleeves, seated on either side of an (opened) case of beer. The caption, spoken by one of the men, is: "Gezellig toch?" :*} -- Col. G. L. Sicherman ...seismo!rochester!rocksanne!rocksvax!sunybcs!gloria!colonel
riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) (10/29/84)
"I never met a man who called a language primitive that he knew."
-- Laurent Clerq, 19th-century French linguist and
pioneer of the use of sign language by the deaf
--- Prentiss Riddle ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.")
--- {ihnp4,harvard,seismo,gatech,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddleaeb@turing.UUCP (10/30/84)
> The nature of the Hopi verb/noun tense/factual distinction is interesting > because Whorf used the non-distinction between noun and verb to > argue that the Hopi probably see the world in a different way. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that human thought is essentially limited by language. In order to test this hypothesis James Cooke Brown invented an artificial language LOGLAN. (Easiest accessible reference: Scientific American, June 1960.) Unfortunately, as far as I know, there arent any 'native' speakers of the language as yet. Is there anybody out there who at least speaks it with some fluency? -- Andries Brouwer -- CWI, Amsterdam -- {philabs,decvax}!mcvax!aeb
jack@vu44.UUCP (Jack Jansen) (10/30/84)
I think that there are two issues mixed up at the moment, being
1. Some languages have a single word-construction for an idea
that needs several words in some other language.
2. Some languages *CAN NOT* be used to express certain ideas.
An example of the first is Dick's 'leraresje' who has to be
called 'little female teacher' in English.
I don't think this is really a deficiency, because it is possible to
communicate the idea, even if you need more words for it.
'Eisenbahnknotenpunkthinundherschieber' has to be written as
'An official working for a railway company who, occasionally,
moves a big handle in one or the other direction, to make sure that
trains get to their destination'. This is cumbersome, but it is still
possible to tell an Englishman that my uncle is an Eisenbablahblahblah.
On the other hand, the Aborigines have no construction for 'what if',
which is much more serious. This really is a language deficiency,
since it will take *lots* of trouble to communicate this idea.
What I would like to know is whether anyone knows of a language that
contains constructions like this that can not be expressed in
English. Of course, it will be very difficult to communicate the idea
of this construction to us, but still ....
Jack Jansen, {seismo|philabs|decvax}!mcvax!vu44!jack
or ...!vu44!htsa!jack
"Only the great masters of style ever succeed in being obscure"
Oscar Wilde, 1894.
"Most unix(tm) programmers are great masters of style"
Jack Jansen, 1984.marcus@pyuxt.UUCP (M. G. Hand) (10/31/84)
For goodness sake! A language is only deficient if it is impossible to express something in it. (It may be cumbersome, however.) By that standard, English is clearly not deficient. The fact that reflexive forms are circumlocutory has little bearing - frequently they are un- necessary complications: the idea can be conveyed adequately without using them (not so French, for example.) Furthermore, if a language lacks certain qualities, attributes or words, new usages and words are borrowed from other languages, or existing words bastardized. I think the whole argument is somewhat sterile since languages in common usage are continually developing and changing in response to the real needs of its speakers (whatever the Academie Francais may prefer to think.) marcus hand (pyuxt!marcus)
marcus@pyuxt.UUCP (M. G. Hand) (10/31/84)
Does gezellig mean the same as the german word "gemutlich"? ('Skuse the
spelling, please, but I'm not a German speaker, or even a speaker of
German).
marcus hand
Incidentally, I think its usually a deficiency in the speaker or writer
rather than the language....lambert@mcvax.UUCP (Lambert Meertens) (10/31/84)
[warn your system administrator if this line is missing] > I think that there are two issues mixed up at the moment, being > 1. Some languages have a single word-construction for an idea > that needs several words in some other language. > 2. Some languages *CAN NOT* be used to express certain ideas. The distinction between these two categories is not an absolute one. Steven Pemberton mentioned already the Dutch word "gezelligheid". No doubt it is possible to explain the meaning of the word "gezellig" and its derivatives in English. To do so, however, to a reasonable degree of precision (let alone to a degree of precision that would suffice for non-native speakers to rely on their understanding and utter these words when and only when appropriate) would require a minor essay. Now these words are not at all infrequently used in Dutch. My dictionary lists as translations for "gezellig": "sociable", "cosy", "snug" and "social". A "gezellig avondje" is rendered as a "social evening". In the direction English -> Dutch this is always reasonable. But telling the host that the evening was "gezellig" would be considered a compliment, whereas stating that it was social sounds like a superfluous statement of fact. Translating "gezellig" as "cosy" is usually not only wrong, but also ridiculous. When I try to express myself in English where I would have used "gezellig" in Dutch, I usually substitute "nice". However, "nice" does not really convey the meaning of what I am trying to say. I experience this as a language deficiency. Another example is the Dutch phrase "voor de hand liggen". There is no phrase in English with the same meaning. In some cases, "to be obvious" is acceptable, in some other cases one can use "to come to mind", but in many cases both are plainly wrong, and in those cases there is no *reasonable* way that I know of to express the concept in English. > On the other hand, the Aborigines have no construction for 'what if', > which is much more serious. This really is a language deficiency, > since it will take *lots* of trouble to communicate this idea. Having no construction for a concept is not a property of a race or ethnic group, but of a language. There are many Australic languages. Is the lack of expressibility of "what if" common to all these, mutually largely disparate, languages? That would be a very interesting fact to find. (However, it appears that none of these languages can express the concept "supply-side economics" :-) Seriously, I don't know any of the Australic languages, but I am not at all convinced that natural languages do exist in which it is hard to express the fact that something has the status of a hypothesis, even though the language may lack a word for the concept "hypothesis". This claim about the languages spoken by the Aborigines seems to me just one more unfounded popular belief similar to so many introduced by travellers to uncharted areas while recounting their curious discoveries. If it is true, however, for some language, then this would be a good test case for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. For the implication would be that the native speakers could not entertain hypothetical thoughts, and so would not take provisions for contingencies. To conclude, I want to point out two deficiencies common to all languages I know. The first is well known: what should you reply to the question "Do you still persist in your lies?", when you believe you are speaking the truth? There is no way of stating that the question implies a falsehood other then by directly contradicting the falsehood. On paper, "Question not applicable" may do, but not in a conversation. The other deficiency has to do with "why" questions. Children tend to pass through a period of asking questions like: "Why are bananas yellow?" "Why does water not burn?" "Why is ice cold?" etc., ad nauseam. In some cases there is no "why"; the concept does not apply. For example, it is not reasonable to ask "Why is it Wednesday today?", or "Why is red a colour?". The deficiency is that there is no accepted way of stating about a proposition that the concept "why" does not apply. -- Lambert Meertens ...!{seismo,philabs,decvax}!lambert@mcvax.UUCP CWI (Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science), Amsterdam "If I were you, I should wish I were me."
biep@klipper.UUCP (J. A. "Biep" Durieux) (11/01/84)
[] In article <1175@dciem.UUCP> mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) writes: >====================== >There is no way, reasonable or not, to render Dutch 'gezellig' into English. >This is also SURELY a language deficiency. >====================== >I was under the impression that "gezellig" was close >to cosy, comfortable, unconstrained and home-like. Is this anything like? I wouldn't say it is "close to" the words you mentioned. It often is, but it isn't that. E.g. it can suddenly be "gezellig" when one of two people on an inhabitated is- land, suddenly reveals a bar of chocolade and shares it with his companion. They may be almost starving, but they eat it with little bits, and talk about the taste, and where, in which shop ("You remember, the old man who used to buy lickorice over there?"), one can buy the best, etc. My English isn't that good, but the whole situation doesn't sound like "cosy", or "home-like", or such. The Dutch word "gezellig" is derived from the same stem as "gezelschap", which means both "the group around you" and "the mutual affection within the group". However, it has got a special meaning too because of the fact that the word is often used with respect to going and drinking coffee together at eleven o'clock in the mor- ning. (The word "coffee" itself is highly associated with "gezellig" too: I don't drink coffee, but nobody would invite me "Come, and drink chocolate milk with us!", however that is what I actually do. The word "coffee" *has* to be mentioned to commumicate the idea. The Dutch expression for "Our house stands always open for you" is "The coffee is always ready for you".) -- Biep. {seismo|decvax|philabs}!mcvax!vu44!botter!klipper!biep I utterly disagree with everything you are saying, but I am prepared to fight myself to death for your right to say it. --Voltaire
malcolm@west44.UUCP (Malcolm Shute.) (11/01/84)
Since when has the word "youse" been used in England (or even Great Britain)?
gbergman@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA (11/03/84)
Without trying to play "Your language more deficient than my
language!", it is nonetheless interesting to list some ways that
languages differ in what they can easily express. Here are some
examples I have noted:
Vocabulary:
The English word "quaint" does not seem to have an equivalent in
any language I have encountered. Most English/foreign-language
dictionaries mistranslate it as "queer, old-fashioned". The one
nearly acceptable translation I found was in an English-French
dictionary: "pittoresque a l'ancienne mode". (This is the situation
in which it is most commonly used, but I think that the "ancienne mode"
is not necessary; most anything that we both enjoy and can look at in a
patronizing way can be called "quaint".) I once asked a
German-English bilingual friend for a translation. He thought for
a moment and said "The quaint old street -- Das entzu"ckende Ga"sschen";
so the same feel can be achieved without reproducing the exact meaning
of the word. "Quaint" is often used sarcastically or euphemistically
to mean "old-fashioned" in a negative sense. But the speaker of English
(unlike the writers of the dictionaries referred to above) is generally
aware that this usage IS sarcastic or euphemistic.
The history of the word is interesting: It comes from Old French
"coint", a past participle which in modern French is replaced by
"connu", and it went through a series of meanings including "cunningly
contrived". So I guess that what was cunningly contrived to one
generation was quaint to the next....
English does not have a word to render the combination of
meanings shared by French "bonneheure", German "Glu"ck", Russian
"shchastye" etc., which includes "well-being", "happiness" and "luck".
It is not clear to me to what extent the word expresses a unified
concept in those languages, nor whether each of those words translates
the others perfectly. (The varied meaning of "happy", "happen" and
"perhaps" in English suggest that the root "hap-" may have expressed
a similarly broad collection of concepts.)
The English word "privacy" seems hard to translate into most
languages (not to be confused with "private property" which of course
EVERY modern language can render.) However, I'm told that in (South
American?) Spanish "intimidad" means "privacy" as well as "intimacy";
and a German said that "Privatspha"re" ("private sphere", with "private"
in the sense of "private property" contributing the modifier) does it
reasonably well.
Some French colleagues who had invited me to speak and arranged
reservations in a small hotel asked me the next day whether the people
who ran it were "kind people". I realized that they were
translating French "gentils" ("nice") and explained that one couldn't
tell whether someone was kind without observing them in a situation
where another person needed help, etc.. After some discussion of the
English word, they were unable to come up with any French equivalent.
(I mentioned this some time later to a French Canadian whose comment was
that the French had no use for the concept.)
I've been told that "lonely" is very hard to translate into
Italian; maybe other languages as well. One has words meaning "alone",
"solitary", which can *imply* loneliness, but not a word that explicitly
expresses the discomfort coming from lack of contact with others.
As a speaker of English, I've had more opportunity to observe
English words that are hard to render into other languages than vice
versa. Occasionally I've asked speakers of other languages for words
in their language that are hard to translate. The one answer I recall
was from a Rumanian: "dor" (I assume from Latin "dolor" "pain") means
"anguished longing for things of one's past".
Finally, for deficiency in the most extreme sense that participants
in this discussion have referred to -- I generally find myself
completely at a loss for words when trying to describe a person's
personality! The words that our language gives us describe stereotypes,
moral judgements, pet theories -- but not the very rich nature that
I perceive when I observe a person. Actually, I have no idea whether
the ways I perceive people's personalities are the same as the ways
others do. Perhaps to try to create a general vocabulary for
personality would be like having someone who is red-green color-blind
and someone who is blue-yellow color-blind trying to create a vocabulary
for color.... But maybe it is possible, and the deficiency of our
language prevents us from organizing our perceptions in this area.
(Of course, every theory, from the astrological to the Freudian to
the personality-testing approach will have a vocabulary for the
categories it posits; but I am skeptical of the validity of such
theories.)
"Vocabulary" is just the first of three or four categories I
meant to include, but it could take me forever to finish this
if I tried to get them all in. Maybe I'll get to some of the others
another time.
Re "gezelig" -- I suppose it is from the same root as
German "Gesellschaft", which suggests that "friendly" or "companionable"
might be reasonable translations -- in many contexts, at least?
George Bergman
Math, UC Berkeley 94720 USA
...!ucbvax!gbergman%cartanir44@sdcc6.UUCP (Theodore Schwartz) (11/03/84)
> > > I think that there are two issues mixed up at the moment, being > > 1. Some languages have a single word-construction for an idea > > that needs several words in some other language. > > 2. Some languages *CAN NOT* be used to express certain ideas. > > The distinction between these two categories is not an absolute one. There are further problems in the comparison of languages and their semantic capabilities that become evident in this series of articles on "deficiencies." 1. The discussion of Dutch "gezellig" illustrates the difficulty of defining a word (more for some words than others) in its OWN language, let alone translating it, i.e., finding a single or compact phrase that conveys its meaning to speakers of another language. The problems of definition and translation appear to be similar and always approximate. One test (of distribution) is whether a proposed synonym or defining phrase or circumlocution can be substituted for the original word over the whole range of environments in which that word can occur. Under this test there are few true synonyms within a language let alone single word translations in the target language. In translation the test is doubly approximate as the environment in which a term occurs are themselves approximate translations, themselves environed by the word being tested. I have spoken to Bible translators,now so widespread in the world, about how they translate such notions as "God" or "hell." They do their best, ignore the incommensurabilities, and rely on God or "God" to get his point across. 2. The notion of "word" in my inexpert opinion is one of the most loosely defined in linguistics. Sometimes it is taken as a unit that can occur by itself (unlike an affix which, while it can occur independently, with many different roots, is a bound morpheme that would not occur by itself unless it has been liberated, like "isms and ologies.") But much of what we take as words in English are, I think, only separated as orthographic conventionsh, not occuring separately as utterances in speech-- compare "am" with "-ing". The sense of "wordness" may be more semantic than syntactic or perhaps more a matter of cognitive chunking. The question of what makes a good dictionary entry may have its counterpart in the storage of vocabulary- "word" being in some way the best retrieval unit. Ted Schwartz Anthro/UCSD
cs4911ay@unm-cvax.UUCP (11/04/84)
[It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a -- ] > From: chuck@dartvax.UUCP (Chuck Simmons) > Fill in the following blanks with the appropriate english gender-neutral > word or phrase: > The President and _____ cabinet convened yesterday. > A person is guilty of disorderly conduct if _____ makes loud or > unreasonable noises. > -- Chuck > dartvax!chuck Well, we can try: The President and THE cabinet convened yesterday. (Of course, this avoids the point somewhat. Use HIS for now. We'll worry about it when we get a female president.) ONE is guilty of disorderly conduct if ONE makes loud or unreasonable noises. (If one is going to bother with gender-neutrality, one should at least try to phrase the statement to take advantage of the facilities available in English.) Those of us who don't bother with gender-neutrality will continue to use the usual English solutions to the problems, e.g.: A person is guilty of disorderly conduct if HE makes loud or unreasonable noises. So there. -- Mike Conley U.N.M., Albuquerque, NM "Think of it as evolution in action."
riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) (11/05/84)
Reminds me of the time two English fellows I met in Italy spent an hour trying
to explain to me what "twee" meant. I think I finally understood, but I had
to admit that I knew of no equivalent in the language we speak on this side of
the Atlantic.
--- Prentiss Riddle ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.")
--- {ihnp4,harvard,seismo,gatech,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddlebrat@gitpyr.UUCP (Steven Goldberg) (11/07/84)
> For goodness sake! A language is only deficient if it is impossible to > express something in it. (It may be cumbersome, however.) By that > standard, English is clearly not deficient. > marcus hand (pyuxt!marcus) Amen, Marcus.. There's a difference between "deficiency" and "efficiency." Steven
dts@gitpyr.UUCP (Danny Sharpe) (11/10/84)
... > The lack of a syntactic feature does not necessarily mean a communicative > deficiency. And in any case it is not clear that if a language cannot > communicate some certain meaning it is deficient - maybe the native speakers > of that language have no need to express that meaning. I don't take it as given that there exist any concepts that some language can't express, because I'm not sure what it means to say that a language "can't express" an idea. One thing that most people in this discussion seem to have overlooked is the fact that the words don't carry all the meaning. The words you are reading now are arousing ideas in your mind. I have no direct control over those ideas. All I can do is try to chose my words so that they will evoke the ideas I want them to in the minds of the majority of those people who bother to read this. If you fail to properly understand what I am trying to say, whose fault is it? Mine for choosing the wrong words? Yours for having the wrong ideas? English's for not having a single word which encompasses everything I'm trying to say? I've had discussions on this topic before with friends, in which I took the position that there are things that can't be expressed in English. But now I think that's a naive viewpoint because so much depends on mutual understanding between the persons involved. I asked a Dutch person about "gezellig" and she explained it so that I think I understand. The closest single-word synonym I could think of in English is "homey" but that's not really anywhere near being an exact equivalent. But now, if someone said to me, "Homey. You know, in the Dutch sense," I would have a good idea of what they meant. English will have communicated an idea that many people on the net have been saying it can't. -- Either Argle-Bargle IV or someone else. -- Danny Sharpe School of ICS Georgia Insitute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332 ...!{akgua,allegra,amd,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo,ut-ngp}!gatech!gitpyr!dts