Re: Plausibility Check


Peter T. Daniels wrote:

fact

Fact is you can't say how many words English had in
Shakespeare's time.

Back in 1974/75 I defined language as follows:

Language is the means of getting help, support and
understanding from those we depend upon in one way
or another --- and every means of getting help, support
and understanding may be called language, on whatever
level of life it occurs.

In the same years 1974/75 I stated a correlation between
human made things and words:

The level of life is mirrored in language. What is special
about human life? The use of things we made ourselves.
These human made things - artificial members and
organs beyond the human body - are mirrored in words.

Words denote human made things: cup, table, house ...

Human made things allow us to name natural entities
and appearances: ceiling - vault - heaven

A clay figurine of an animal or a human being allows
us to name animals and human beings

Life and soul are what is missing in clay figurines,
definitions ex negativo, again in correlation with
human made objects

A band led to the word and, German binden for to
bind, substantive Bund for union, und for and

I may add ancient Greek kairoeis for well chained or
warped (of a textile), firm, fast, solid, perhaps also
Latin foedus for union, fetialis for a contract among
nations, et for and.

The more things we use the more words we need.
A numerical correlation of the number of things and
the size of the vocabulary may be a topic of a doctoral
thesis.

D. Jensen should consider these relations when he
ponders the language of a future time, somewhere
between 2 500 and 12 000 AD - he should have at
least a vague idea of the material world in the time
his novel plays for coining a matching language.

Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch

.

Relevant Pages

  • Berlinski paper presented 1985 at Applied systems analysis
    ... Complexity, Language and Life: Mathematical Approaches, ... This paper explores the idea that life comprises a language-like ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: what is etymology? (linguistics and biology)
    ... Life and language, part 1, what is language? ... words in ancient Greek and in Latin). ... calamities, to face them directly when they occur, ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: genes and language (Homer, Richard Dawkins)
    ... I am sure that my definition of language - language is ... > is Marie Jean Faucounau alias grapheus alias fr.soc. ... > theory of language (from genes to humans to aliens, ... >> Genetic engineering and communication in the web of life ...
    (sci.archaeology)
  • Re: genes and language (Homer, Richard Dawkins)
    ... I am sure that my definition of language - language is ... > is Marie Jean Faucounau alias grapheus alias fr.soc. ... > theory of language (from genes to humans to aliens, ... >> Genetic engineering and communication in the web of life ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: what is etymology? (linguistics and biology)
    ... Life and language, part 2, what is life? ... Language plays a key role in the organization ... and saw the sky as a giant ... sentence: The ball is round. ...
    (sci.lang)