🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan25.233640.1895@Csli.Stanford.EDU>, malouf@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Rob Malouf) writes:
|> In article <1775@tdat.teradata.COM> swf@tools3teradata.com (Stan Friesen) writes:
|> >Get real!  The only people that would lack a general word for 'tree' would be
|> >those living where there *are* no trees! In fact so-called 'primitive' peoples
|> >often have a *better* vocabulary for describing living things than 'modern'
|> >languages.
|> 
|> Actually, there is nothing universal about the category `tree'.  We
|> impose our own organizational system onto the world, and there is no
|> reason why other languages might not organize things another way.

Well, if you want to get *picky* :-)

In more precise language I would be surprised to find any language in which there
was not a word whose semantic field overlaps widely with that of the English
word 'tree', except in regions where there are no objects in the semantic field
of the English word 'tree'.  [In particular, there is usually a fairly clear
distinction between woody and non-woody plants, that is likely to be reflected
in the vocabulary of any language].

|> 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.

Oh, absolutely - I might even doubt if the speakers of such a language where
human!  Generalization is a major part of the human psyche.

[BTW, that was an interesting point about 'primitive' languages having more
elaborate pronoun systems - not that I really find it surprising, some of
the most involved pronoun systems I know of are in polynesian languages].

-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com