What makes a linguist tick?

cooltouch said:

I collect dictionaries, and happen to have a couple of Spanish/English ones. For 'forget', I note the verbs perder and olvidar. However, perder also has the meaning to 'lose (something)' which is possibly where the semantic blending originates from. It can be risky to speculate, not being fluent in Spanish, but it seems to me that if one wanted to own up to one's own forgetfulness (olvido, by the way), one would use olvidar instead of perder.

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Olividar is the Spanish equivalent of English oblivion; both are Latin derived and part of the I.E. *lei complex -- and I suspect it's not something one would use in Mexico, or Guatamala; even in Spain it's markedly archaic and formal and suggests something more like abandoned.

There very much is the phenomenon where multilingual speakers can identify phrases and words with complex connotations in one language that they can't precisely express in another with the same economy, precision and emotional weight.

ColoradoGuy said:

What about those Amazonian languages like Piraha, which is severely limited in its ability to modify or quantify things? Are you saying they just never have the need or desire to speak what at least we would call clearly, so their language lacks that capacity?

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It's been several years since I've been involved in discussions on this issue, but the basic short answer to your question is "yes."

It is essential to consider the native speaker's milieu. If they exist in an environment where there seldom if ever arises the need for addressing these elements, then it shouldn't be surprising that their vocabulary may be lacking in these same elements. The Piraha likely have no word for "snow," either. If they never encounter it, why should they have a word for it? Regarding their counting system (one, two, many), this is not unique to the Piraha, and is actually found in a number of cultures where, apparently, it is not important to the native speakers to entertain higher values than this.

Other cultures have very few color words. There's been quite a bit of linguistic research done regarding this, mostly to see if vocabulary is indicative of social complexity. There is some evidence to indicate this. Here's an interesting article on the subject. Scroll to the part on the Tarahumara.

http://books.google.com/books?id=l2...Nc8&sig=62p24LF75m7ima8in2BsQu15b8I#PPA118,M1

Best,

Michael

Medievalist said:

Olividar is the Spanish equivalent of English oblivion; both are Latin derived and part of the I.E. *lei complex -- and I suspect it's not something one would use in Mexico, or Guatamala; even in Spain it's markedly archaic and formal and suggests something more like abandoned.

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Please look closely at the verb I used in my example. It is olvidar, not olividar. Neither of the dictionaries I used, which are fairly current, suggested that 'olvidar' is archaic.

Best,

Michael