Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site sdcc6.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!sdcsvax!sdcc6!ir44 From: ir44@sdcc6.UUCP (Theodore Schwartz) Newsgroups: net.ai,net.nlang Subject: Re: natural language deficiencies? Message-ID: <1811@sdcc6.UUCP> Date: Sat, 3-Nov-84 15:40:57 EST Article-I.D.: sdcc6.1811 Posted: Sat Nov 3 15:40:57 1984 Date-Received: Mon, 5-Nov-84 20:57:10 EST Organization: U.C. San Diego, Academic Computer Center Lines: 46 Xref: sdcsvax net.ai:2240 net.nlang:1993 > > > 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