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From: pki@itcyyz.ipsa.reuter.com (Phil King)
Subject: Words for snow (was Borrowed Words)
Organization: Reuters Information Services (Canada) Ltd., Toronto
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References: <3mst7j$hll@news4.primenet.com> <D76tns.80G@cup.hp.com> <3mun7h$d6e@news.primenet.com>
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 15:27:39 GMT
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In article <3mun7h$d6e@news.primenet.com>,
James P Mork <jpmork@primenet.com> wrote:
>Eric Brunner Contra (brunner@cup.hp.com) wrote:
>
>: Which is an urban myth. See the sci.lang FAQ.
>
>This is ambiguous. I've heard both the 200 words for snow and the 3000 
>species of potatoes from what I consider respected sources.  I doubt I'm 
>gonna change my views just because some newsgroup is spreading a rumor.
>Do you have a PRINTED source?

I'm appending here a (long) article that was posted to sci.lang
last year on this topic.

From: bchamber@superior.carleton.ca (Bob Chamberlain)
Subject: Re: Languages, thoughts, snow... ah, snow! 

ricil@gov.nt.ca (Rici Lake) writes:

>In article <smith.341.776788212@pixies.univ-lyon1.fr> smith@pixies.univ-lyon1.fr (Earl SMITH) writes:
>>
>>Just to add interest to the discussion, it seems that the language evolves
>>based on a need.  For example, the Inuit toungue, Inuktitut, has
>>more than 10 words for different types of snow.

>One of the hoariest lines in popular linguistics :)

Yes, 'tis.  So here, read this!

The articles in _The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax (and Other
Irreverent Essays on the Study of Language)_ by Geoffrey K. Pullum
originally appeared in the journal _Natural Language and Linguistic
Theory_ (NLLT).  The part labeled here as Introduction is an
introduction to the article given in the compiled volume, and the part
labeled Main Text is the actual original article.

This article has some linguistic references that may be lost on 'lay'
people, but it's still a good read.  It should be kept close at hand
to be thrown at anyone who makes the statement that 'eskimos have lots
of words for snow'. ;^>  It is reproduced here without permission.

----------------------8<--------------------8<-------------------------
Introduction

Once the public has decided to accept something as an interesting
fact, it becomes almost impossible to get the acceptance rescinded.
The persistent interestingness and symbolic usefulness overrides any
lack of factuality.

   For instance, the notion that dinosaurs were stupid, slow-moving
reptiles that soon died out because they were unsuccessful and
couldn't keep up with the industrious mammals is stuck in the public
consciousness. It is far too useful to give up. What insult are you
going to hurl at some old but powerful idiot or huge but slow-adapting
corporation if not 'dinosaur'? The new research discoveries of the
last two decades concerning the intelligence, agility, endothermicity,
longevity, and evolutionary robustness of the dinosauria have no
effect on the use of the term 'dinosaur' and its supposed
associations; no one wants to hear that the dinosauria dominated the
planet with intelligence and adaptive genius for hundreds of millions
of years and were far more successful than mammals have yet shown
themselves to be.
   
   It is in the scholarly community that we ought to find a certain
immunity, or at least resistance, to uncritical acceptance of myths,
fables, and misinformation. But sadly, the academic profession shows a
strong tendency to create stable and self-sustaining but completely
false legends of its own, and hang on to them grimly, transmitting
them from article to article and from textbook to textbook like
software viruses spreading between students' Macintoshes. Stephen O.
Murray has pointed out to me a rather beautifully titled paper by John
Shelton Reed, Gail E. Doss, and Jeanne S. Hurlbert of the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: 'Too good to be false: an essay in
the folklore of social science' (Sociological Inquiry 57 (1987),
1-11). It is about the assertion that the frequency of lynchings in
the American South in the early part of this century was positively
correlated with the price of cotton, a 'fact' that has frequently been
used as a key piece of evidence for frustration-aggression theory.
Reed et al. show that nearly all constantly changing, the numerous
mentions of this 'fact' state the finding incorrectly, and neglect to
cite the works in which real doubt has been cast on whether there is a
fact there at all.
  
   There are thousands of further examples, both within and without
academia; whole books have been published on commonly believed
fallacious (non-)knowledge (e.g. Tom Burnam, Dictionary of
Misinformation, Crowell, New York, 1975). In the study of language,
one case surpasses all others in its degree of ubiquity, and the
present chapter is devoted to it: it is the notion that Eskimos have
bucketloads of different words for snow.

   What I do here is very little more than an extended review and
elaboration on Laura Martin's wonderful American Anthropologist report
of 1986. Laura Martin is professor and chair of the Department of
Anthropology at the Cleveland State University. She endures calmly the
fact that virtually no one listened to her when she first published.
It may be that few will listen to me as I explain in different words
to another audience what she pointed out. But the truth is that the
Eskimos do not have lots of different words for snow, and no one who
knows anything about Eskimo (or more accurately, about the Inuit and
Yupik families of related languages spoken by Eskimos from Siberia to
Greenland) has ever said they do. Anyone who insists on simply
checking their primary sources will find that they are quite unable to
document the alleged facts about snow vocabulary (but nobody ever
checks, because the truth might not be what the reading public wants
to hear).

   In this chapter, I take a rather more critical stance regarding the
role of Benjamin Lee Whorf than Laura Martin did; in fact, I'm rather
cruel to the memory of that fine amateur linguist. Since several
readers of this piece sic when it first appeared (and after it
appeared in abridged form in the inaugural issue of the academic
magazine Lingua Franca), let me be clear about this. Whorf has a
lasting place in the history of linguistics, a place few of us can
aspire to. He is basically responsible for opening up our access to an
entire language that had previously been inaccessible (the classical
form of Mayan that lay behind the Mayan hieroglyphs until Whorf
deciphered them); he coined lastingly useful terms (allophone is an
example) and introduced intriguing new concepts (the concept of a
cryptotype, for instance); and he did important academic work almost
entirely without having paid positions in the academic world--an
uncommon achievement then, and one almost unheard of now.

   But he wasn't a god, and his contribution to Eskimo lexicography
looks shoddy to me, so I poke some fun at him in this chapter, just as
I am liable to poke fun at anyone who stumbles across my path. Lasting
though his place in the history of linguistics may be, Whorf was
guilty of his own small part of the amplification of a piece of
misinformation, and deserves his own small share of opprobrium.
Professor Martin has seen in writing numbers as high as four hundred
(repeat, 400) given as the number of Eskimo words for snow. The four
hundred figure came from a piece by a would-be author who admitted
(under questioning by a magazine fact-checker) to having no source for
the number whatsoever. The nonsense that Whorf unwittingly helped to
foster is completely out of control.

   "A silly, infuriatingly unscholarly piece, designed to mislead" is
what one irate but anonymous senior scholar called this chapter when
it was first published in NLLT. But this is not correct; rather, what
I have written here is a silly, misleadingly unscholarly piece,
designed to infuriate. There is a huge difference. If scholars of
Boas, Whorf, and other giants of twentieth-century language study get
angry enough at my flippancy, perhaps they will do some further
research on relevant issues (finding out whether Whorf ever did do any
informant work with speakers of the Inuit or Yupik languages, for
example), and that is fine.  I will read with interest whatever is
published or sent to me on this topic. So will Professor Laura Martin,
who continues to collect any and all citations concerning Eskimo snow
terms, however misinformed or well-informed they may be; her address
is: Department of Anthropology, Cleveland State University, Cleveland,
Ohio 44115, USA.


Main Text
  
Most linguistics departments have an introduction-to-language course
in which students other than linguistics majors can be exposed to at
least something of the mysteries of language and communication:
signing apes and dancing bees; wild children and lateralization;
logographic writing and the Rosetta Stone; pit and spit; Sir William
Jones and Professor Henry Higgins; isoglosses and Grimm's Law;
Jabberwocky and colorless green ideas; and of course, without fail,
the Eskimos and their multiple words for snow.

   Few among us, I'm sure, can say with certainty that we never told
an awestruck sea of upturned sophomore faces about the multitude of
snow descriptors used by these lexically profligate hyperborean
nomads, about whom so little information is repeated so often to so
many. Linguists have been just as active as schoolteachers or
general-knowledge columnists in spreading the entrancing story.  What
a pity the story is unredeemed piffle.

   Anthropologist Laura Martin of Cleveland State University spent
some of her research time during the 1980s attempting to slay the
self-regenerating myth of Eskimo snow terminology, like a Sigourney
Weaver fighting alone against the hideous space creature in the movie
Alien (a xenomorph, they called it in the sequel Aliens; nice word).
You may recall that the creature seemed to spring up everywhere once
it got loose on the spaceship, and was very difficult to kill.

   Martin presented her paper at the annual meeting of the American
Anthropological Association in Washington D.C. in December 1982, and
eventually (after a four-year struggle during which bonehead reviewers
cut a third of the paper, including several interesting quotes) she
published an abbreviated version of it in the 'Research Reports'
section of AAA's journal (Martin 1986). This ought to have been enough
for the news to get out.
 
   But no, as far as widespread recognition is concerned, Martin
labored in vain. Never does a month (or in all probability a week) go
by without yet another publication of the familiar claim about the
wondrous richness of the Eskimo conceptual scheme: hundreds of words
for different grades and types of snow, a lexicographical winter
wonderland, the quintessential demonstration of how primitive minds
categorize the world so differently from us.

   And the alleged lexical extravagance of the Eskimos comports so
well with the many other facets of their polysynthetic perversity:
rubbing noses; lending their wives to strangers; eating raw seal
blubber; throwing grandma out to be eaten by polar bears; "We are
prepared to believe almost anything about such an unfamiliar and
peculiar group", says Martin, in a gentle reminder of our buried
racist tendencies.

   The tale she tells is an embarrassing saga of scholarly sloppiness
and popular eagerness to embrace exotic facts about other people's
languages without seeing the evidence. The fact is that the myth of
the multiple words for snow is based on almost nothing at all. It is a
kind of accidentally developed hoax perpetrated by the anthropological
linguistics community on itself.

   The original source is Franz Boas' introduction to The Handbook of
North American Indians (1911). And all Boas says there, in the context
of a low-key and slightly ill-explained discussion of independent
versus derived terms for things in different languages, is that just
as English uses separate roots for a variety of forms of water
(liquid, lake, river, brook, rain, dew, wave, foam) that might be
formed by derivational morphology from a single root meaning 'water'
in some other language, so Eskimo uses the apparently distinct roots
aput 'snow on the ground', gana 'falling snow', piqsirpoq 'drifting
snow', and qimuqsuq 'a snow drift'. Boas' point is simply that English
expresses these notions by phrases involving the root snow, but things
could have been otherwise, just as the words for lake, river, etc.
could have been formed derivationally or periphrastically on the root
water.

   But with the next twist in the story, the unleashing of the
xenomorphic fable of Eskimo lexicography seems to have become
inevitable.  What happened was that Benjamin Lee Whorf, Connecticut
fire prevention inspector and weekend language-fancier, picked up
Boas' example and used it, vaguely, in his 1940 amateur linguistics
article 'Science and linguistics', which was published in MIT's
promotional magazine Technology Review (Whorf was an alumnus; he had
done his B.S. in chemical engineering at MIT).

   Our word snow would seem too inclusive to an Eskimo, our man from
the Hartford Fire Insurance Company confidently asserts. With an
uncanny perception into the hearts and minds of the hardy Arctic
denizens (the more uncanny since Eskimos were not a prominent feature
of Hartford's social scene at the time), he avers:

     We have the same word for falling snow, snow on the ground,
     snow packed hard like ice, slushy snow, wind-driven flying snow--
     whatever the situation may be. To an Eskimo, this all-inclusive
     word would be almost unthinkable; he would say that falling snow,
     slushy snow, and so on. are sensuously and operationally different,
     different things to contend with; he uses different words for them
     and for other kinds of snow. (Whorf 1940; in Carroll 1956, 216)
         
Whorf's article was quoted and reprinted in more subsequent books than
you could shake a flamethrower at; the creature was already loose and
regenerating itself all over the ship.
  
   Notice that Whorf's statement has illicitly inflated Boas' four
terms to at least seven (1: "falling", 2: "on the ground", 3: "packed
hard", 4: "slushy, 5: "flying", 6, 7, . . .: "and other kinds of
snow"). Notice also that his claims about English speakers are false;
I recall the stuff in question being called snow when fluffy and
white, slush when partly melted, sleet when falling in a half-melted
state, and a blizzard when pelting down hard enough to make driving
dangerous. Whorf's remark about his own speech community is no more
reliable than his glib generalizations about what things are
"sensuously and operationally different" to the generic Eskimo.

   But the lack of little things like verisimilitude and
substantiation are not enough to stop a myth. Martin tracks the great
Eskimo vocabulary hoax through successively more careless repetitions
and embroiderings in a number of popular books on language. Roger
Brown's Words and Things (1958, 234-36), attributing the example to
Whorf, provides an early example of careless popularization and
perversion of the issue. His numbers disagree with both Boas and Whorf
(he says there are "three Eskimo words for snow", apparently getting
this from figure 10 in Whorf's paper; perhaps he only looked at the
pictures). (1)

  (1) Murray (1987) has argued that Martin is too harsh on some
people, particularly Brown, who does correctly see that some English
speakers also differentiate their snow terms (skiers talk of powder,
crust, and slush). But Martin is surely correct in criticizing Brown
for citing no data at all, and for making points about lexical
structure, perception, and Zipf's Law that are rendered nonsense by
the actual nature of Eskimo word structure (his reference to "length
of a verbal expression" providing "an index of its frequency in
speech" fails to take account of the fact that even with a single root
for snow, the number of actual word forms for snow in Eskimo will be
effectively infinite, and the frequency of each one approximately
zero, because of the polysynthetic morphology).
         
   After works like Brown's have picked up Whorf's second-hand
misrecollection of Boas to generate third-hand accounts, we begin to
get fourth-hand accounts carelessly based on Brown. For example,
Martin notes that in Carol Eastman's Aspects of Language and Culture
(1975; 3rd printing, 1980), the familiar assertion that "Eskimo
languages have many words for snow" is found only six lines away from
a direct quote of Brown's reference to "three" words for snow.

   But never mind: three, four, seven, who cares? It's a bunch, right?
When more popular sources start to get hold of the example, all
constraints are removed: arbitrary numbers are just made up as the
writer thinks appropriate for the readership. In Lanford Wilson's 1978
play The Fifth of July it is "fifty". From 1984 alone (two years after
her 1982 presentation to the American Anthropological Association
meetings on the subject--not that mere announcement at a scholarly
meeting could have been expected to change anything), Martin cites the
number of Eskimo snow terms given as "nine" (in a trivia encyclopedia,
Adams 1984), "one hundred" (in a New York Times editorial on February
9), and "two hundred" (in a Cleveland TV weather forecast).
 
   By coincidence, I happened to notice, the New York Times returned
to the topic four years to the day after committing itself to the
figure of one hundred: on February 9, 1988, on page 21, in the
'Science Times' section, a piece by Jane E. Brody on laboratory
research into snowflake formation began: "The Eskimos have about four
dozen words to describe snow and ice, and Sam Colbeck knows why." The
New York Times, America's closest approach to a serious newspaper of
record, had changed its position on the snow-term count by over 50%
within four years. And in the science section. But hey: nine,
forty-eight, a hundred, two hundred, who cares? It's a bunch, right?
On this topic, no source can be trusted.

   People cannot be persuaded to shut up about it, either. Attempting
to slay the creature at least in my locality, I mentioned Martin's
work in a public lecture in Santa Cruz in 1985, in the presence of a
number of faculty, students, and members of the general public. I
drove home the point about scholarly irresponsibility to an attentive
crowd, and imagined I had put at least a temporary halt to careless
talk about the Eskimo morpheme stock within Santa Cruz County. But it
was not to be.

   Within the following three months, two undergraduate students came
to me to say that they had been told in class lectures about the
Eskimo's highly ramified snow vocabulary, one in politics, one in
psychology; my son told me he had been fed the same factoid in class
at his junior high school; and the assertion turned up once again in a
"fascinating facts" column in a Santa Cruz weekly paper.

   Among the many depressing things about this credulous transmission
and elaboration of a false claim is that even if there were a large
number of roots for different snow types in some Arctic language, this
would not, objectively, be intellectually interesting; it would be a
most mundane and unremarkable fact.

   Horsebreeders have various names for breeds, sizes, and ages of
horses; botanists have names for leaf shapes; interior decorators have
names for shades of mauve; printers have many different names for
different fonts (Caslon, Garamond, Helvetica, Times Roman, and so on),
naturally enough. If these obvious truths of specialization are
supposed to be interesting facts about language, thought, and culture,
then I'm sorry, but include me out.

   Would anyone think of writing about printers the same kind of slop
we find written about Eskimos in bad linguistics textbooks?  Take a
random textbook like Paul Gaeng's Introduction to the Principles of
Language (1971), with its earnest assertion: "It is quite obvious that
in the culture of the Eskimos . . . snow is of great enough importance
to split up the conceptual sphere that corresponds to one word and one
thought in English into several distinct classes . . ."  (p. 137).
Imagine reading: "It is quite obvious that in the culture of printers
. . . fonts are of great enough importance to split up the conceptual
sphere that corresponds to one word and one thought among non-printers
into several distinct classes...." Utterly boring, even if true. Only
the link to those legendary, promiscuous, blubber-gnawing hunters of
the ice-packs could permit something this trite to be presented to us
for contemplation.
  
   And actually, when you come to think of it, Eskimos aren't really
that likely to be interested in snow. Snow in the traditional Eskimo
hunter's life must be a kind of constantly assumed background, like
sand on the beach. And even beach bums have only one word for sand.
But there you are: the more you think about the Eskimo vocabulary
hoax, the more stupid it gets.

   The final words of Laura Martin's paper are about her hope that we
can come to see the Eskimo snow story as a cautionary tale reminding
us of "the intellectual protection to be found in the careful use of
sources, the clear presentation of evidence, and above all, the
constant evaluation of our assumptions." Amen to that. The prevalence
of the great Eskimo snow hoax is testimony to falling standards in
academia, but also to a wider tendency (particularly in the United
States, I'm afraid) toward fundamentally anti-intellectual "gee-whiz"
modes of discourse and increasing ignorance of scientific thought.

   This is one more battle that linguists must take up--like
convincing people that there is no need for a law to make English the
official language of Kansas (cf. chapter 14), or that elementary
schools shouldn't spend time trying to abolish negated auxiliary verbs
("There is no such word as can't"). Some time in the future, and it
may be soon, you will be told by someone that the Eskimos have many or
dozens or scores or hundreds of words for snow.  You, gentle reader,
must decide here and now whether you are going to let them get away
with it, or whether you are going to be true to your position as an
Expert On Language by calling them on it.
  
   The last time it happened to me (other than through the medium of
print) was in July 1988 at the University of California's Irvine
campus, where I was attending the university's annual Management
Institute. Not just one lecturer at the Institute but two of them
somehow (don't ask me how) worked the Eskimological falsehood into
their tedious presentations on management psychology and
administrative problem-solving. The first time I attempted to demur
and was glared at by lecturer and classmates alike; the second time,
discretion for once getting the upper hand over valor, I just held my
face in my hands for a minute, then quietly closed my binder and crept
out of the room.

   Don't be a coward like me. Stand up and tell the speaker this: C.
W. Schultz-Lorentzen's Dictionary of the West Greenlandic Eskimo
Language (1927) gives just two possibly relevant roots: qanik,
meaning 'snow in the air' or 'snowflake', and aput, meaning 'snow on
the ground'. Then add that you would be interested to know if the
speaker can cite any more.
  
   This will not make you the most popular person in the room. It will
have an effect roughly comparable to pouring fifty gallons of thick
oatmeal into a harpsichord during a baroque recital. But it will
strike a blow for truth, responsibility, and standards of evidence in
linguistics.


REFERENCES
         
Adams, Cecil. 1984. The straight dope: A compendium of human
   knowledge, edited and with an introduction by Ed Zotti, Chicago
   Review Press, Chicago, Illinois.
Boas, Franz. 1911. Introduction to The handbook of North American
   Indians, Vol. 1, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 40, Part 1,
   Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Reprinted by Georgetown
   University Press, Washington D.C. (c. 1963) and by University of
   Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Nebraska (1966) .
Brown, Roger. 1958. Words and things, The Free Press, New York.
Carroll, John B., ed. 1956. Language, thought, and reality: Selected
   writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf, MIT Press, Cambridge,
   Massachusetts.
Eastman, Carol. 1975. Aspects of language and culture, Chandler, San
   Francisco, California. 3rd printing, Chandler & Sharp, Novato,
   California, 1980.
Gaeng, Paul A. 1971. Introduction to the principles of language,
   Harper & Row, New York.
Martin, Laura. 1986. "Eskimo words for snow": A case study in the
   genesis and decay of an anthropological example, American
   Anthropologist 88, 2 (June), 418-23.
Murray, Stephen O. 1987. Snowing canonical texts, American
   Anthropologist 89, 2 (June), 443-44. 
Schultz-Lorentzen, C. W. 1927. Dictionary of the West Greenlandic
   Eskimo language, Meddelser om Gronland 69, Reitzels, Copenhagen.
Whorf, Benjamin Lee. 1940. Science and linguistics, Technology Review
   (MIT) 42, 6 (April), 229-31, 247-48. Reprinted in Carroll. ed.,
   207-19.
         

APPENDIX: Yes, But How Many Really?
         
Yes, but how many are there really? I can just hear you asking. I've
told you a lot about how sloppy everyone has been on this subject, and
about how they ought to be challenged to cite some data, and about how
much ridiculous and unsupported exaggeration has gone on. But I
haven't told you anything about the actual vocabulary of Eskimos and
the range of snow terms they really use.

   Well, to tackle this question we must, however reluctantly, move
from our armchair, at least as far as the phone or the computer mail
terminal. I contacted the best Eskimologist I was personally
acquainted with, namely Anthony Woodbury of the University of Texas at
Austin, and asked him. I will paraphrase what he said. Keep in mind
that with true scholarly caution and modesty, he is quite diffident
about giving conclusive answers; the crucial issues about many
relevant forms, he feels, need to be resolved by research that has not
yet been done. I take responsibility for this somewhat embellished
sketch of the position he takes.

   When you pose a question as ill-defined as "How many Eskimo words
for snow are there?" Woodbury observes, you run into major problems
not just with determining the answer to the apparently empirical "How
many" part but with the other parts: how to interpret the terms
"Eskimo", "words", and "for snow". All of them are problematic.

   The languages that the Eskimo people speak around the top of the
world, in places as far apart as Siberia, Alaska, Canada, and
Greenland, differ quite a lot in details of vocabulary. The
differences between urbanized and nomadic Eskimos and between young
and old speakers are also considerable. So one problem lies in getting
down to the level of specific lists of words that can be verified as
genuine by a particular speaker of a particular dialect, and getting
away from the notion of a single truth about a monolithic "Eskimo"
language.

   Then one needs to get clear about what one proposes to count when
one counts "words". Even in English, the distinction between
internally unanalyzable roots (like snow and slush) on the one hand
and inflected word forms of nouns on the other is worth noting. Snow
is one word, but it is easy to generate another dozen directly from
it, simply by applying inflectional and derivational morphological
rules to the root: snowball, snowbank, snowblower, snowcapped,
snowdrift, snowfall, snowflake, snowlike, snows, snowshoe, snowstorm,
snowy.... You get the picture.

   Now, this may not seem like too wild a profusion of derived words.
But in the Eskimo languages there is a great deal more inflection
(grammatical endings) and vastly more fully productive derivational
morphology (word formation). For each noun stem there are about 280
different inflectional forms. And then if you start adding in all the
forms derivable by word formation processes that yield other parts of
speech (illustrated in a rudimentary way by English to snow, snowed,
snowing, snowier, snowiest, etc.), you get an even bigger
collection--indeed, an infinite collection, because there really is no
such thing as the longest word in a language of the Eskimo type where
words of arbitrary complexity can be derived.

   So if you identify four snow-related noun stems in some Eskimo
dialect, what do you report? Four? Or the number of actual inflected
noun forms derivable therefrom, certainly over a thousand? Or the
entire set, perhaps infinite, of relatable words of all parts of
speech?

   Finally, Woodbury points out that there is a real issue about what
is a word for snow as opposed to a word for something else. Some
concrete examples will be useful here. Take the form igluksaq, which
turned up (misspelled) on a list of twenty alleged words for snow in a
Canadian Inuit dialect that was sent to me by Edith Moravcsik of the
University of Wisconsin, who got it from a correspondent of hers, who
got it from a minister of religion, who got it from some Inuit people
in the Kewatin region among whom he had worked as a missionary.
Igluksaq was glossed 'snow for igloo making' on the list.  But
Woodbury points out that the word is a productive formation from iglu
'house' and -ksaq 'material for'; in other words, it means simply
'house-building material'. In Woodbury's view, this would probably
include plywood, nails, perhaps bricks or roofing tiles.  Igluksaq
isn't a word for a special kind of snow at all.
  
   Another word on the list (misspelled again) was apparently meant to
be saumavuq, and was glossed 'covered in snow'. But this, Woodbury
reports, is clearly just a verb form meaning 'it has been covered' .
It doesn't appear to have anything specifically to do with snow.

   Many similar observations could be made about the words on the list
Moravcsik obtained. The unfortunate fact is that even lists of Eskimo
words with meanings attached, written out by people with extensive
acquaintance with the people and the language, have to be interpreted
in a sophisticated way against the background of a full understanding
of Eskimo morphology and etymology if we are to draw conclusions about
whether they can be counted as words for snow.

   So how many really? I know you still crave an answer. I will say
only this. In 1987, in response to a request from some students at
Texas who had read Laura Martin's article, Woodbury put together a
list of bases in the Central Alaskan Yupik language that could be
regarded as synchronically unanalyzable and had snow-related meanings.
All of them are in Steven A. Jacobson's Yup'ik Eskimo Dictionary
(University of Alaska, Fairbanks, 1984). Some of them are general
weather-related words relating to rain, frost, and other conditions;
some are count nouns denoting phenomena like blizzards, avalanches,
snow cornices, snow crusts, and the like; some are etymologizable in a
way that involves only roots unrelated to snow (example: nutaryug- is
glossed as 'new snow' but originates from nutar- 'new' and -yug- 'what
tends to be', so it means literally 'that which tends to be new' or
'new stuff'), but they have apparently been lexicalized as ways of
referring to snow. The list includes both non-snow-referring roots
(e.g. muru- 'to sink into something') and etymologically complex but
apparently lexicalized stems based on them that are usually glossed as
referring to snow (e.g. muruaneq 'soft deep snow', etymologically
something like 'stuff for habitually sinking into'). The list has
about a dozen different stems with 'snow' in the gloss, and a variety
of other words (slightly more than a dozen) that are transparently
derived from these (for example, natquig- is a noun stem meaning
'drifting snow' and natquigte- is a verb stem meaning 'for snow etc.
to drift along ground').

   So the list is still short, not remarkably different in size from
the list in English (which, remember, boasts not just snow, slush, and
sleet and their derivatives, but also count nouns like avalanche and
blizzard, technical terms like hardpack and powder, expressive
meteorological descriptive phrases like flurry and dusting, compounds
with idiosyncratic meanings like snow cornice, and so on; many of the
terms on Woodbury's list are much more like these terms than like
simple mass nouns for new and unusual varieties of snow).

   If it will allow you to rest easier at night, or to be more of an
authority at cocktail parties, let it be known that Professor Anthony
Woodbury (Department of Linguistics, University of Texas, Austin,
Texas 78712) is prepared to endorse the claim that the Central Alaskan
Yupik Eskimo language has about a dozen words (even a couple of dozen
if you are fairly liberal about what you count) for referring to snow
and to related natural phenomena, events, or behavior. Reliable
reports based on systematic dictionary searches for other Eskimo
languages are not available as far as I know.

   For my part, I want to make one last effort to clarify that the
chapter above isn't about Eskimo lexicography at all, though I'm sure
it will be taken to be. What it's actually about is intellectual
sloth.  Among all the hundreds of people making published
contributions to the great Eskimo vocabulary hoax, no one had acquired
any evidence about how long the purported list of snow terms really
was, or what words were on it, or what criteria were used in deciding
what to put on the list. The tragedy is not that so many people got
the facts wildly wrong; it is that in the mentally lazy and
anti-intellectual world we live in today, hardly anyone cares enough
to think about trying to determine what the facts are.
         
----------------------8<--------------------8<-------------------------

D'ya get all that?!?  Spread the word!  ;^>

later: bob

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bob Chamberlain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . bchamber@ccs.carleton.ca
Institute of Cynical Studies                       Carleton University
----------------------------------------------------------------------
   When your opinions start to coincide with those of the majority,
 it is time to reconsider your opinions. (paraphrase?) --- Mark Twain
======================================================================


From denning@emunix.emich.edu Fri Sep  9 16:16:59 EDT 1994
Article: 5222 of sci.lang
Xref: itcyyz sci.lang:5222
Path: itcyyz!geac!uunet.ca!uunet.ca!uunet!MathWorks.Com!yeshua.marcam.com!zip.eecs.umich.edu!emunix.emich.edu!denning
From: denning@emunix.emich.edu (Keith Denning)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Trying to find the article on Eskimo snow wor
Date: 8 Sep 1994 17:23:17 GMT
Organization: Eastern Michigan University
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Message-ID: <34nha5$iq5@zip.eecs.umich.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: emunix.emich.edu


Ok, folks; here's a fuller list. I don't REALLY think this will change
many made-up minds, but what the hell; maybe someone will see what I've
been trying to get at about LEXICALIZATION. (Perhaps someone out there
would like to give us all an account of the synchronically and/or dia-
chronically LEXICAL vs. (morpho)syntactically compositional status of 
these terms and tell us on what they might base such a determination.)
 
Following are two separate postings made in late '90/early '91
(details on request). I have demarcated them by rows of asterisks. (My
host system won't allow me to post this much material in normal quotes.)
 
Those interested in an English translation of the French used for the 
E. Arctic terms may wish to consult
 
Lucien Schneider. 1985. Ulirnaisiqutiit. An Inuktitut dictionary of 
northern Quebec, Labrador and eastern Arctic dialects (with an English-
Inuktitut index). Laval, Que.: Les Presses de l'Universite' Laval.
 
In that work, incidentally, in the English Index, under 'snow' are 
listed: aniu, apijaq, aput, isiritaq, katakartanaq, kavisilaq, 
kiniritaq, mannguq, masak, matsaaq, natiruvaaq, pukak, qannialaaq,
qaanik, qiasuqaq, qiquamaaq. (Yes, I know that some of these appear 
analyzable, though whether they actually are -- synchronically and/or 
in psychologically realistic terms -- is another matter.)
 
Keith
(denning@emunix.emich.edu)
 
*****************************************************************
 
 These are 31 words about snow, from the Inuit, Aivilik and
 Igloolik languages from J.MacDonald from igloolik research.
 center (this list is probably not exhaustive)
        -       -       -       -       -
 Aluiqqaniq   : Snowdrift on a steep hill, overhanging on top.
 Aniuk        : Snow for drinking water.
 Aniuvak      : Snow remaining in holes.
 Aput         : Snow on the ground (close to the generic Snow)
 Aqilluqqaaq  : Fresh and soggy snow
 Auviq        : snow brick, to build igloo
 Ijaruvak     : Melted snow, turned in ice cristals.
 Isiriartaq   : Falling snow, yellow or red.
 Kanangniut   : Snowdrift made by North-East wind.
 Katakartanaq : Crusty snow, broken by steps.
 Kavisilaq    : snow hardened by rain or frost
 Kinirtaq     : wet and compact snow.
 Masak        : wet snow, saturated.
 Matsaaq      : snow in water
 Maujaq       : deep and soft snow, where it's dificult to walk.
 Mingullaut   : thin powder snow, enters by cracks and covers objects.
 Mituk        : small snow layer on the water of a fishing hole.
 Munnguqtuq   : compressed snow which began to soften in spring.
 Natiruviaqtuq: snow blasts on the ground.
 Niggiut      : snowdrift with South-east wind
 Niummak      : hard waving snow staying on ice fields
 Pingangnuit  : snowdrift made by south-west wind
 Piqsiq       : snow lift by wind. Blizzard.
 Pukak        : dry snow cristals, like sugar powder
 Qannialaaq   : light falling snow
 Qanniq       : falling snow
 Quiasuqaq    : re-frozen snow surface, making crust.
 Qiqiqralijarnatuq: crissing snow when walked on.
 Uangniut     : snowdrift made by north-west wind.
 Uluarnaq     : round snowdrift
 Uqaluraq     : taper snowdrift
 
****************************************************************
 
Consulting Lucien Schneider : Dictionnaires francais - esquimau 
et esquimau - francais du parler de l'UNGAVA
Presses de l'Universite LAVAL, Quebec, 1970,
this is  what I found :
(a few comments : the first list is of 'words' translated
by Schneider with 'NEIGE', the second list contains 'words'
related to 'Neige', the third list
contains 'words' translated by verbal phrases. a (short) list
contains three words from a second source, the last list was
posted some months ago in the newsgroup.
Some words are indicated with their 'root', example aneogavineq
is a derivative from aneo.)
Note: if somebody whishes to translate from french (or eskimo!!!)
to english, (s)he is welcome. I am not fluent enough...
 
 
aneo                  : neige pour faire de l'eau
aneogavineq           : neige tre`s dure, tasse'e et gele'e; ne've'
                              (<- aneo)
aomannaq              : neige vraiment fondante, neige pre^te a` fondre,
                        neige qui fond petit a` petit
                              (<- aomayoq = mou)
apinngraut            : la toute premie`re couche de neige de l'automne
                              (<- apivoq = il se couvre de neige )
aput                  : neige qui recouvre le pays
aqidloqa^q            : neige molle, en banc, apre`s poudrerie
aqidlupiaq            : neige et eau en plein de'gel
                              (<- aqittoq = mou)
ayaq                  : neige aux habits
iglusaq               : neige bonne pour la construction de l'iglou
                              (<- iglu = maison)
isherearktaq          : neige jaune, rougie ( comme enfume'e, boucane'e en
                        tombant )
                              (<- isheq = fumee)
kataka^rktana`q       : neige a` crou^te dure qui ce`de sous les pas
                              (<- katakpoq = il tombe d'une hauteur)
kaviserdlaq           : neige rugueuse sur laquelle il a plu et qui a comme
                         des ecailles de glace; neige moutonneuse
                              (<- kaviseq = ecaille de poisson )
manngomaq             : neige tasse'e, humide, semi-molle au de'gel
 = ? mannguoma^q      : neige ramollie par le temps
manngoq               : neige fondante, boue de neige
maoyaq                : (par exemple neige molle,) terrain qui enfonce sous
                         les pas
masaq (masak)         : neige humide qui est en train de tomber
matsaq                : neige humide, imbibe'e d'eau, au sol ou dans la
                        gamelle
matsaaruti            : neige prepare'e pour glacer le traineau
                              (<- matsaq)
mingoleq              : couche de neige fine, de poudrerie
naterovaq             : neige fine emporte'e par le vent ou depose'e par le
                         vent
                              (<- nateq = plancher de l'iglou)
ninngeq               : neige mise en muraille autour de l'iglou ou pellete'e
                        dessus pour le rendre moins perme'able au froid
ninngesaq             : la neige pour faire du ninngeq
pe^rtorineq           : couche mince de neige le'ge`re, molle, pose'e par la
                        poudrerie sur un objet
pukak                 : neige cristallise'e qui s'effrite, neige granuleuse
                        en cristaux durs (le plus souvent sur sol herbeux,
                        sous la neige normale)
qaniala^q             : neige (qui tombe) fine, espace'e, le'g`re
                              (<- qanik )
qaniapaluk            : neige tre`s fine tombant par temps calme
qanik                 : neige qui tombe, flocon de neige
qaniktaq              : neige re'cemment tombe'e au sol
qerkshoqaq (qerkshuqa^q): neige regele'e, neige dont le dessus, regele' en
                          surface, est dur
qerkshusimayoq        : neige agglome're'e, durcie, glace'e
qerkshutoq            : neige agglome're'e, concasse'e, foule'e aux pieds
                        pour l'iglou d'automne
qeoraliaq             : de la neige effrite'e
qeoralingneq          : neige effrite'e, soit dans un seau pour faire de
                        l'eau, soit pour boucher les trous de l'iglou
                              (<- qeoralikpoq = effriter de la neige)
qeqomaq               : neige dont le dessus est gele', glace' (apre`s une
                        fonte le'ge`re au de'but du printemps)
qikuutiksaq           : neige pulve'rise'e pour boucher les trous de
(ou qikuutiksayaq)         l'iglou
                              (<- qikoq = trou dans l'iglou par le vent qui
                              ronge la neige)
qimudjuk(qemuddjuk)   : banc de neige, conge`res, stries dans la neige faites
                        par la tempe^te
sermeq                : bouillie de neige pour cimenter quelquechose (les
                        blocs de construction d'une maison de glace) prise et
                        pose'e
sermesaq              : me'lange de neige et eau pour cimenter (ou eau +
                        terre)
shiimignatoq          : neige de nature a` faire grincer les patins du
                        traineau
                              (<- shiimikpa^ = il le coince)
sitidloqa^q           : neige dure en conge`res apre`s poudrerie froide
                              (<- sitiyoq = dur)
tudlesimayoq          : qui a e'te' pietine', tasse' au pied (neige a iglou)
                        aplani ainsi (lit de neige)
                              (<- tudlepa^ = il met le pied dessus)
tututiksaq            : la neige destine'e a` e^tre tasse'e, me^me
                        e'miette'e, et mise en place mais non encore tasse'e
                        (pour faire l'iglou)
                            (<- tutunnepoq = tasser avec les pieds )
umiktuutiksaq         : neige (ou autre) pour boucher les trous de l'iglou
                              (<- umikpa = il l'a bouche')
>
>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
aoktorunneq           : partie de neige tasse'e, fondue et gele'e (du lit de
                        neige sous la personne; endroit ou` un chien est
                        reste' couche')
                              (<- aoktoq =fondu; aokpoq = il fond)
                              (lit de neige = igleq)
aputi^t               : des morceaux de neige
                              (<- aput)
igluligutiksaq        : de quoi ba^tir un iglou : tout ce qui sert ( neige,
                        pana (?), bougie
iglulinekoi           : de'bris de neige en construisant l'iglou
ikiartoq              : un bloc de neige qu'on coupe et qui se casse en deux
                        horizontalement par suite de couches de neige
                        diffe'rentes
                              (ikiaq = entre-deux, inte'rieur)
miligaq               : mince pellicule de neige travaille'e pour cacher un
                        pie`ge
                              (<- milik = voile)
nargrouti             : morceau de neige pour boucher un trou qui de'goutte
                        dans l'iglou
nipitita^q            : morceau de neige qu'on fait coller a` un endroit du
                        do^me de l'iglou d'ou` l'eau de'goutte
                              (<- nipittoq = coller)
nipperqut             : quelquechose qui absorbe l'humidite' (e'ponge, sciure
                        neige)
oqootaq               : rempart de neige pour s'abriter en voyage a` l'heure
                        du the' ou pour prote'ger l'entre'e de l'iglou
                              (<- oqortoq = il porte des ve^tements d'hiver)
pa^rtuilitaq          : mur de neige, de protection devant l'entre'e de
                        l'iglou
                              (<- pa = entre'e de l'iglou)
pe^rte                : bloc de neige qu'on dresse devant la fene^tre de
                        l'iglou pour l'empe'cher de s'enneiger
qatserkutit           : blocs de neige empile's les uns sur les autres pour
                        mettre d'autres objets
                              (<- qatsitoq = bosse)
qerkshoq              : crou^te de glace sur la neige apre`s la pluie
qodliti               : le dernier bloc de neige du do^me de l'iglou
qoligaq               : ce qu'on met sur un pie`ge pour le cacher (neige,
                        papier ou mousse)
                              (<- qoli = dessus)
qorktaq               : trou dans la neige fait par un jet d'urine
saviuyarktuaq         : bloc de neige coupe' au couteau pour faire l'iglou
saviuyarnekoit        : de'bris de neige apre`s de'coupe
                              (<- saviuyartuaq)
saksaneq              : de'bris de neige apre`s construction de l'iglou
shuarutaq             : petite averse (pluie ou neige)
sittaneq              : chose (glace de mer, neige, viande) qui a durci en
                        gelant
talugaq               : e'cran de neige sur un pie`ge
                              (<- talutaq = rideau)
tukerksineq           : moellon de neige durcie ou glace qui s'est forme'e
                        sur le poil, la barbe ou sur un morceau de bois
                              (<- tukerpa` = il l'a pousse' du pied)
>
--------------------------------------------------
>
apivoq                : il se couvre de neige
aqidloqertutoq        : il fait un temps a` faire de l'aqidloya^q
ayamerpoq             : enlever une grosse quantite' de neige de dessus ses
                        habits
igluiyoq              : il a le mal de neige
iyaroa^nartoq         : il neige avec vent de face
                              (<- iyi = oeil)
maodzarsatoq          : il tombe de la neige floconneuse, molle, bonne a`
                        faire du 'maoyaq'
manngoutiksaliorpoq   : il tombe une neige fine, molle, au printemps, neige
                        qui fera se tasser l'iglou, l'abaissera de`s que le
                        soleil parai^tra
manngomayoq           : la neige baisse de niveau au soleil
                              (<- mannguk : enfonce', racine)
manngotoq             : la neige baisse de niveau
masarqiyoq            : il tombe de la neige imbibe'e d'eau
mingolertoq           : le temps couvre, saupoudre, d'une mince couche de
                        neige tre`s fine
nateroviktoq          : il neige de cette neige fine (<- naterovaq) dans
                        l'iglou
pe^rksitoq            : il poudre actuellement
                              (<- perksivoq = il l'a enleve')
pe^rquservigiva^      :il poudre, la neige tombe en tourbillons
                              (<- pe^rquserpoq = il se refuse)
pe^rtuyuktoq          : il poudre un peu
qaniala^rtoq          : il neigeotte
qaniapalukpoq         : elle (<-qaniapaluk) tombe
qannetoq              : il neige, il tombe de la neige
                              (<- qanik)
qanniatshutoq         : il neige faiblement
qeqergranartoq        : la neige est de nature a` provoquer le crissement
                        des pas
                              (<- qeqergraq = bruit de pas)
tuttipa^              : il ajuste le bloc de neige pour le faire toucher en
                          bas et sur le cote^
 
---------------------------------------------------------------
(collis)
aput
qanik (ecrit qaniit)
niktaalaq             : neige porte'e par le vent
 
---------------------------------------------------------------
(cedelle)
Termes non certains, sources moins sures...
puka^ngayoq           : neige suffisamment cristallise'e, bonne pour l'iglou
                              (<- pukak)
qivere^kkuti          : neige au pied des blocs du premier tour de l'iglou
                        pour les bloquer
                              (<- qivertoq = pivoter)




