There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Creating a Proto-language
From: Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews
2.1. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
From: Matthew George
2.2. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
From: George Corley
3.1. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
From: Matthew George
3.2. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
From: H. S. Teoh
3.3. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
From: Adam Walker
3.4. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
From: Matthew George
3.5. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
From: George Corley
3.6. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
From: Padraic Brown
3.7. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
From: Gary Shannon
3.8. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
From: George Corley
3.9. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
From: R A Brown
4a. Your Recommendations
From: Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews
4b. Re: Your Recommendations
From: Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews
5.1. Re: Pesky morphemes
From: David McCann
Messages
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1a. Re: Creating a Proto-language
Posted by: "Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 23, 2013 5:57 am ((PDT))
Thanks. Didn't even know we had IPa Braille.
-----Original Message-----
From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Garth Wallace
Sent: Friday, March 22, 2013 10:49 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Creating a Proto-language
On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 12:15 AM, Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews
<[email protected]> wrote:
> I'll look for that as well. I'll try audio first, and Braille as a last
> resort.
Speaking of braille, you might find this link handy:
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~reng/BrlIPA.html
It's about IPA Braille in particular, and IPA accessibility in
general. I can't personally vouch for it, but it seems promising.
Messages in this topic (25)
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2.1. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
Posted by: "Matthew George" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 23, 2013 7:22 am ((PDT))
On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 11:35 PM, George Corley <[email protected]> wrote:
> What exactly are you talking about?
The introduction of 'borrow' as a synonym for 'loan'. It's a very
different case from the use of 'learn' as you describe.
I have no prescriptivist impulses regarding 'learn' - it's the borrow-loan
shift that I'm rejecting.
Matt G.
Messages in this topic (46)
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2.2. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
Posted by: "George Corley" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 23, 2013 10:35 am ((PDT))
On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 9:10 AM, Matthew George <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 11:35 PM, George Corley <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> > What exactly are you talking about?
>
>
> The introduction of 'borrow' as a synonym for 'loan'. It's a very
> different case from the use of 'learn' as you describe.
>
> I have no prescriptivist impulses regarding 'learn' - it's the borrow-loan
> shift that I'm rejecting.
>
Alright. I will say that "borrow" for "loan" is not something that I
immediately recognize, and even have the same intuition as you (that the
interlocutor is being asked to borrow something on behalf of the speaker).
Still, it exists and should be accounted for, regardless of whether either
of us accept it intuitively, and we can easily do by comparing it to a
pattern that exists cross-linguistically.
Messages in this topic (46)
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3.1. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
Posted by: "Matthew George" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 23, 2013 7:25 am ((PDT))
I think it would be more useful to look at the words people actually 1)
recognize, and then 2) use. If a word is in the OED, but is never found in
the general culture - or anywhere outside of obscure literary backwaters -
there's not a lot of practical difference between that word being part of
the language and being truly foreign.
Technical terms exist in every language that needs them - adopted if
necessary. So I don't think they should be counted.
Matt G.
Messages in this topic (34)
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3.2. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
Posted by: "H. S. Teoh" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 23, 2013 7:32 am ((PDT))
On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 10:25:30AM -0400, Matthew George wrote:
> I think it would be more useful to look at the words people actually
> 1) recognize, and then 2) use. If a word is in the OED, but is never
> found in the general culture - or anywhere outside of obscure literary
> backwaters - there's not a lot of practical difference between that
> word being part of the language and being truly foreign.
>
> Technical terms exist in every language that needs them - adopted if
> necessary. So I don't think they should be counted.
[...]
The distinction is not clear-cut, though. For example, words like
"oxygen" or "carbon monoxide" are clearly technical terms, yet in this
day and age most people understand them even if they are non-chemists.
And while most people *wouldn't* know what "monosodium glutamate" refers
to, they *would* understand what its acronym "MSG" is.
So where does one draw the line?
T
--
Why are you blatanly misspelling "blatant"? -- Branden Robinson
Messages in this topic (34)
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3.3. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
Posted by: "Adam Walker" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 23, 2013 8:15 am ((PDT))
What is a technical term? Do you mean we throw out the entire
vocabularies of computing? The Sciences? Mathematics? Cooking?
Masonry? Knitting? Painting? Art criticism? Pet breeding? Where do you
stop? What's left? Pronouns and articles?
Adam who uses hyperbole
On 3/23/13, Matthew George <[email protected]> wrote:
> I think it would be more useful to look at the words people actually 1)
> recognize, and then 2) use. If a word is in the OED, but is never found in
> the general culture - or anywhere outside of obscure literary backwaters -
> there's not a lot of practical difference between that word being part of
> the language and being truly foreign.
>
> Technical terms exist in every language that needs them - adopted if
> necessary. So I don't think they should be counted.
>
> Matt G.
>
Messages in this topic (34)
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3.4. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
Posted by: "Matthew George" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 23, 2013 10:19 am ((PDT))
On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 11:12 AM, Adam Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
> What is a technical term? Do you mean we throw out the entire
> vocabularies of computing? The Sciences? Mathematics? Cooking?
> Masonry? Knitting? Painting? Art criticism? Pet breeding? Where do you
> stop? What's left? Pronouns and articles?
>
For the purpose of comparing the number of words in languages, scientific
and engineering terminology can be ignored, because every society that
deals with science and engineering is utilizing with the same concepts with
equivalent (if not always identical) words.
I don't know whether species names (or parts thereof) ought to be
considered 'words' in a language's lexicon, but I do know that we don't
need to consider the question for this subject, because everyone shares
that naming system and everyone either has or doesn't have the terms as
'words'. The same holds for subatomic particles, for the chemical
elements, for physical forces, and so on.
Matt G.
Messages in this topic (34)
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3.5. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
Posted by: "George Corley" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 23, 2013 10:39 am ((PDT))
On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 12:19 PM, Matthew George <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 11:12 AM, Adam Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > What is a technical term? Do you mean we throw out the entire
> > vocabularies of computing? The Sciences? Mathematics? Cooking?
> > Masonry? Knitting? Painting? Art criticism? Pet breeding? Where do you
> > stop? What's left? Pronouns and articles?
> >
>
> For the purpose of comparing the number of words in languages, scientific
> and engineering terminology can be ignored, because every society that
> deals with science and engineering is utilizing with the same concepts with
> equivalent (if not always identical) words.
>
> I don't know whether species names (or parts thereof) ought to be
> considered 'words' in a language's lexicon, but I do know that we don't
> need to consider the question for this subject, because everyone shares
> that naming system and everyone either has or doesn't have the terms as
> 'words'. The same holds for subatomic particles, for the chemical
> elements, for physical forces, and so on.
>
I would prefer using a more empirical test. That might be why other people
were referring to the 90% or 80% vocabulary, since those technical terms
that the community doesn't usually use would end up being excluded. Just
excluding things based on semantic domain in this way would essentially
lead us to undercount the lexica of scientifically-literate cultures.
Messages in this topic (34)
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3.6. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 23, 2013 11:48 am ((PDT))
--- On Sat, 3/23/13, H. S. Teoh <[email protected]> wrote:
> > I think it would be more useful to look at the words people actually
> > 1) recognize, and then 2) use. If a word is in the OED, but is never
> > found in the general culture - or anywhere outside of obscure literary
> > backwaters - there's not a lot of practical difference between that
> > word being part of the language and being truly foreign.
> >
> > Technical terms exist in every language that needs them - adopted if
> > necessary. So I don't think they should be counted. [...]
>
> The distinction is not clear-cut, though. For example, words like
> "oxygen" or "carbon monoxide" are clearly technical terms, yet in this
> day and age most people understand them even if they are non-chemists.
> And while most people *wouldn't* know what "monosodium glutamate" refers
> to, they *would* understand what its acronym "MSG" is.
>
> So where does one draw the line?
Just popping in to say that me I'd draw the line broad and wide -- if the
word is now or has ever been an English word, no matter how ancient, no
matter how obscure, no matter how dialectical, no matter how foreign
seeming, then it gets counted. Just because a word is spelled with funny
little marks over some of the letters doesn't make it any less English.
MacKay said it best, of all our immigrant and newly coined words:
"[English] borrows, it steals, it assimilates what words it pleases from
all points of the compass, and asks no questions of them, but that they
shall express thoughts and describe circumstances more tersely and more
accurately than any of the old words beside which they are invited to take
their places."
I see no problem at all with highly technical words or specialist words
and so also have no issue at all with older or more obscure terms. Like
with an honest census, if you're going to cut corners by arbitrarily
leaving out whole segments of the total lexicon, then any answer you
arrive at will be murchy cogging.
We may never be able to say with absolute confidence "English has 849,423
words" -- we may never be able to say better than "English has something
like 850k words, give or take a few thousand". But it's better than lazily
saying "well, we didn't want to be bothered with all these horribly long
organic molocules; or foreign food; or any word that hasn't been used since
1800; or any other word we just couldn't be bothered with -- so we just
ended up averaging the number of words per page in the AHD and hey presto!
English has 482,123 words!"
The *only* line I'd draw a little bit narrow is obvious inflexional forms.
So, "car" and "cars" or "see" and "sees" don't count as two words -- both
have the same fundamental meaning. The only time a grammatical termination
should be counted as a word is if, for example, the plural of something
has a different meaning from the singular. For example, "men" where it has
the connotation of a team or a group of soldiers. I could be argued away
from this bit of line drawing, mind, if it proved to be to unuseful in the
context.
Padraic
> T
Messages in this topic (34)
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3.7. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 23, 2013 12:10 pm ((PDT))
On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 11:48 AM, Padraic Brown <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Just popping in to say that me I'd draw the line broad and wide -- if the
> word is now or has ever been an English word, no matter how ancient, no
> matter how obscure, no matter how dialectical, no matter how foreign
> seeming, then it gets counted.
---
It seems to me that gives an unfair advantage to languages with the
longest written record. Does that mean we count all of Chaucer's words
as English as well?. And what about even older Anglo Saxon words?
I would use a much more pragmatic approach and use something like a
large-circulation English newspaper as my source. If a word appeared
in print in that newspaper in the last year then I would count it. If
it's too archaic to appear in print today then it's no longer part of
the language, but has become part of an older ancestral language.
--gary
Messages in this topic (34)
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3.8. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
Posted by: "George Corley" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 23, 2013 12:37 pm ((PDT))
On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 2:10 PM, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 11:48 AM, Padraic Brown <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> >
> > Just popping in to say that me I'd draw the line broad and wide -- if the
> > word is now or has ever been an English word, no matter how ancient, no
> > matter how obscure, no matter how dialectical, no matter how foreign
> > seeming, then it gets counted.
>
> ---
>
> It seems to me that gives an unfair advantage to languages with the
> longest written record. Does that mean we count all of Chaucer's words
> as English as well?. And what about even older Anglo Saxon words?
>
It would give a huge overcounting for languages with long written
histories, resulting in massively overcounting English, Chinese, Latin,
etc. Meanwhile, languages with no written record (which includes the
majority of the world's languages) might even be undercounted.
> I would use a much more pragmatic approach and use something like a
> large-circulation English newspaper as my source. If a word appeared
> in print in that newspaper in the last year then I would count it. If
> it's too archaic to appear in print today then it's no longer part of
> the language, but has become part of an older ancestral language.
Sounds like a decent proxy, although you are still privileging languages
with an extant written tradition (what if you want to compare it to a
language for which there are no newspapers?). Ideally, the number of words
in a language would be estimated by a large survey of native speakers, in
order to get a handle on what words are most known in the community.
I really don't see how a "Count ALL the words!" mentality is useful for
anything other than a sort of linguistic dick-measurement. Knowing whether
different speech communities have larger average vocabularies, however,
might actually be interesting.
Messages in this topic (34)
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3.9. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
Posted by: "R A Brown" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 23, 2013 1:01 pm ((PDT))
On 23/03/2013 19:37, George Corley wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 2:10 PM, Gary Shannon wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 11:48 AM, Padraic Brown wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Just popping in to say that me I'd draw the line
>>> broad and wide -- if the word is now or has ever
>>> been an English word, no matter how ancient, no
>>> matter how obscure, no matter how dialectical, no
>>> matter how foreign seeming, then it gets counted.
>>
>> --- It seems to me that gives an unfair advantage to
>> languages with the longest written record. Does that
>> mean we count all of Chaucer's words as English as
>> well?. And what about even older Anglo Saxon words?
>
> It would give a huge overcounting for languages with
> long written histories, resulting in massively
> overcounting English, Chinese, Latin, etc.
Latin? That's a relative newcomer. And English, well, even
younger ;)
Now Greek has a far longer written history; it was first
recorded in a version of the Phoenician script way back in
the 8th century BC, and has been recorded in a similar
scripts _until the present day_. But it was first committed
to writing way before then in the mid _15th_ century BC in
Linear B.
If we count all words "no matter how ancient, no matter how
obscure, no matter how dialectical, no matter how foreign
seeming", the Greek will beat Latin by a _long_ way and, I
am fairly certain, it will beat English.
> Meanwhile, languages with no written record (which
> includes the majority of the world's languages) might
> even be undercounted.
Of they must be. There's no record of their ancient and
obscure words, and almost certain limited (if any) record
dialectical words. We will not be comparing like with like.
[snip]
>
> I really don't see how a "Count ALL the words!"
> mentality is useful for anything other than a sort of
> linguistic dick-measurement.
Yes, and IMO the "English has the most words of any
language" is of the similar mentality, which is why I
haven't taken part in this discuss till now.
I intervene to point out by the ""Count ALL the words!"
criterion, a language of far older provenance than Latin and
which, unlike Latin, is still a living language, will be
among the top runners ;)
In natlangs the number of words is, of course, potentially
unlimited.
--
Ray
==================================
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
"language
began with half-musical unanalysed expressions
for individual beings and events."
[Otto Jespersen, Progress in Language, 1895]
Messages in this topic (34)
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4a. Your Recommendations
Posted by: "Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 23, 2013 8:35 am ((PDT))
Hi, Larning Ally has The Unfolding Language. I have it, and will clear space
to transfer it to my victor stream. I hope the readers they've picked are
good ones.
I'm about to check for the other book. I'll replace The Power of Babbel as
well.
Messages in this topic (2)
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4b. Re: Your Recommendations
Posted by: "Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 23, 2013 8:55 am ((PDT))
They don't have the second recommendation in any alternative format, so I
just sent through a request for digitizing it. Now it's out of my hands.
Messages in this topic (2)
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5.1. Re: Pesky morphemes
Posted by: "David McCann" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 23, 2013 9:33 am ((PDT))
On Sat, 23 Mar 2013 11:50:47 +0000
R A Brown <[email protected]> wrote:
> How does one analyze _sing ~ sang ~ sung_ morphemically?
The 1940s structuralists like Harris would say
sang = sing + PAST
where "sang" is an allomorph of "sing" and PAST has a zero allomorph.
The problem then was that they'd defined a morpheme as a set of
allomorphs in complementary distribution. So how do you study the
distribution of zero?
A better approach would be to say that the word "sang" is exponent of
the lexeme "sing" in the context +PAST, while PAST has no exponent in
the context +sing.
Generative linguistics would have yet another description. The
assumption (common to Harris and Chomsky) that any descriptive
technique is the only true method and applicable to all languages
is one that I find unconvincing.
My favourite book on the subject is Morphilogy, by P. H. Matthews.
Messages in this topic (33)
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