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From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Snow Canards (was:  Re: It is always heresy to appeal to the data!)
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References: <3kj7tf$pl@peaches.cs.utexas.edu> <3kkspu$ag2@news.csus.edu> <3kmn0i$qmb@news.duke.edu> <3kmugs$50e@panix.com>
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 1995 20:56:34 GMT
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In article <3kmugs$50e@panix.com>, Gordon Fitch <gcf@panix.com> wrote:
>kellogg@acpub.duke.edu (David Kellogg):
>| ...  Russell seems to have been reading Steven Pinker
>| recently, so let me just get the quote right:
>| "Speaking of anthropological canards, no discussion of language
>| and thought would be complete without the Great Eskimo Vocabu-
>| lary Hoax.  Contrary to popular belief, the Eskimos do not have more
>| word for snow than do speakers of English.   [...]"
>
>I recall reading this, and I was very surprised that the
>Inuit have no more words for snow than I, since they have
>far more need (I would think) for dealing with it than I do.
>
>However, if their language is at all like Indian languages,
>and some others, what Dr. Pinker designates as "words" may
>be more like what we call "roots" in Indo-European
>languages; and meanings may be subtly altered by introducing
>various prefixes, suffixes, tonal changes, and so on, to
>produce a great variety of semantic shadings.

Quite right, the Inuit languages are agglutinative.  One must be careful
talking about "words" in an agglutinative language; *any* root may 
have hundreds of derivatives.  The majority of these derived forms, 
however, are fully predictable in meaning from the meanings of the root
and the affixes; they are generally more comparable to a phrase rather than
a word in English.

>If that is the case, saying that the Inuit have ten words
>for snow may be as much of a canard as saying they have
>400; the latter may, in fact, be more accurate in a
>pragmatic sense.  And both views would demonstrate our
>tendency to smash up a strange set of categories and
>jury-rig the detritus into a familiar form.

Sure, you could say that the Inuit have hundreds of "words" for snow--
but for the reasons outlined above, they have hundreds of "words" for
*everything*.  That's how an agglutinative langauge works.
