Re: How many languages don't have "until"

On Jun 21, 7:25 am, Harlan Messinger
<hmessinger.removet...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Mok-Kong Shen wrote:
ranjit_math...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Mok-Kong Shen wrote:
ranjit_math...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
[snip]
Are you asking whether in other languages there is one single word,
instead of a phrase, that could be translated to "until". I don't
think that this sort of 1-1 correspondence is of much significance,
as long as the same concept can be expressed and is commonly expressed
practically (see e.g. the English please and the French s'il vou
plait).

Even if it is not a problem, I want to know which languages* are like
Hindi, in this respect.
* non-Indic & non-Dravidian languages, that is.

Then, if I don't err, in Chinese (at least in the modern form)
one needs more than one ideograms to express "until", similar
to the French analogy given above.

BTW, there are, I suppose, more significant aspects of differences
in languages. I heard that there is at least one language where there
is no recursion. This in my view means that one is sort of forced
to think differently while conversing than people in languages with
recursion. (Evidence of Sapir-Whorf hypothese?)

According to the spiel about Recursion on Wikipedia
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursion#Recursion_in_language), the
language in question is Pirahã. I'd swear, I'm starting to think that
Pirahã is a myth or at least a context for folkloric fabrications. It's
like the Chelm or the Paul Bunyan or the Till Eulenspiegel of linguistics..-

Daniel Everett is either a complete charlatan or incredibly stupid.

He claims that he and his wife and infant child lived among the
Piraha for a couple of years straight. The child must therefore be a
perfect bilingual. Why doesn't he just ask the kid to translate?
.

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