From: malouf@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Rob Malouf)
Subject: Re: Correlation Lengths of Language Changes
Organization: Stanford University CSLI
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 18:20:56 GMT

In article <Jan.27.22.43.52.1993.13212@pilot.njin.net> hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey) writes:
>In article <1993Jan25.233640.1895@Csli.Stanford.EDU> malouf@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Rob Malouf) writes:
>This should be really interesting.  ARe these languages from
>certain regions, say the American continent, or Pacific islands
>or what ??

The most interesting part of his work was the sampling method.  He
tried to get a representative sample of the world's languages, while
making sure that the languages were only distantly related so that the
assumption of independence that all his statistical tests depended on
would be reasonable.

>I'd agree with the part about having different problems to solve. If
>the problems don't have many specific things to do with geography
>and climate, it would seem that other more advanced societies would
>have already solved those problems.

Eh?  I don't follow you.  

>  (Of course, I use the terms "primitve" and "advanced" here
>> in a technical sense as defined by Perkins.  I mean to make any value
>> judgements about languages or societies).
>
>Why not?  There's no need to be so PC.  A language either has
>5-6,000 words or has 100,000.  It doesn't matter much what you
>call it, does it?

You misunderstood me.  It's not a question of being "PC", it's a
question of being accurate.  Perkins' conclusion (and to be honest I'm
not 100% convinced) was that the languages of advanced cultures and
the languages of primitive cultures (as measured by some index of
cultural sophistication borrowed from anthropology) are different.
Not better or worse, not more or less expressive, just different.
There is absolutely no evidence that primitive languages have fewer
words (even if we could count the words) or that complex ideas are
not expressable in primitive languages.

>The lexicon is obviously going to have an influence on how you
>go about saying things.  Furthermore the word-formation structure
>will also influence it.  For example, you can easily make up
>about 30 nouns from one verb-root in Turkish but none of them
>will be in the dictionary. LIke this;
>...
>It's true that a language like this (supposedly with a small
>lexicon) can express a lot but there's a practical limit to
>how far it can be carried.  If every word was 20 syllables long,
>people might revolt :-)..

You make my point for me.  Turkish, having fewer unanalyzable lexical
items than English, would by your standard be deemed less expressive.
However, as you've just shown, nothing could be further from the
truth.  While you might imagine there is a "practical limit" to how
far these processes can be carried, there doesn't seem to be one.

>> What I would be surprised to find was a language which had no
>> superordinate categories but instead view each kind of plant as a
>> complete unique sort of thing.
>
>It might happen.  If some people on a small island only saw fishes
>there'd be no need for them to contrast them with anything else
>except themselves.  Many primitive people who live in isolation
>may have no concept of what they're called (maybe just people).
>They have no reason to distinguish themselves from any other
>people. Words will develop either in response to a need or when
>they are seen in other languages to express concepts which don't
>exist.  Primitive people would not have needed separate words for
>plate, soup bowl, cup, saucer, box, container,...... one single
>word ***container*** might have been fine.

Once again, your hypothesis is, at first glance, reasonable.  There is
no a priori reason that language couldn't work that way.  However, it
is false.  It just doesn't seem to be true. Just because you can
imagine such a situation doesn't mean it exists.  

Rob Malouf
malouf@csli.stanford.edu

Newsgroups: sci.lang