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From: lewis_proudfoot@comsys.rockwell.com (Lewis Proudfoot)
Subject: Re: Vocabulary size in various languages
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Date: Fri, 22 Dec 1995 19:29:33 GMT
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Jeff Adams <jeffa@kurz-ai.com> wrote:

>Somewhere in all of this is the notion that some ideas are more
>easy to express in some languages (& require more words in other
>languages), and that the language we speak can have subtle but
>dramatic effects on our Weltbild.

>Jeff

Ohmigosh - the Whorfian Hypothesis is back....
Whorf formulated the same theory several decades ago, and tested the
theory using North American Indian languages.  What he found was that
while neighboring Indian tribes often shared similar languages, they
frequently had very dissimilar religious beliefs and cultural
practices - and other groups, with similar beliefs, often had very
different languages.  This problem was recently discussed here,
disguised as the 'eskimos have 27 words for snow' discussion.

I think the Whorfian Hypothesis makes sense, and it is easy to find
limited examples when studying different languages (such as Russian
verbs of motion compared to English), in a fundamental sense the
theory does not appear to have predictive utility.

Flame On!
Lew

