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Re: [ontolog-forum] 15,000-year-old ancestral language

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Mike Bennett <mbennett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 09 May 2013 15:30:42 +0100
Message-id: <518BB312.4000307@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
I can't see a lesson for ontology in the survival or otherwise of words. 
Words that are about features of a primitive life, and terms that are 
semantically primitive, are two entirely different matters. I can't see 
any benefit in conflating the one with the other.    (01)

On the other hand, the abstraction away from tea/chai to 'brew' reflects 
a nice exercise in asking of a given kind of thing "what kind of thing 
is this?" and thereby arriving at semantically more primitive concepts. 
Just as a securities exchange is a special case of a more general kind 
of marketplace service, so a brew made from the Tea/Chai leaf is a 
special case of a brew made from any kind of leaf, which itself is a 
special case of a brew made by pouring boiling water onto any leaf, bark 
or other natural product.    (02)

That's ontology :)    (03)

Mike    (04)

On 08/05/2013 19:28, Barkmeyer, Edward J wrote:
> For the record, 'tea', German Tee and Russian chai are all cognates.  All of 
>those Indo-European forms are cognates, and they are as John says, all taken 
>from Han words for the plant. But the Mandarin term and the Cantonese term are 
>also cognates -- variants of a common Han precursor.  It doesn't really make a 
>difference where in China you encountered the product.
>
> The Polish designation 'herbata' is more likely to be Indo-European in 
>origin, and derived from one of the words for 'leaf', whence we have 'herbs'.  
>You can put other kinds of leaves and flowers in boiling water, and some north 
>Slav people may have done that for centuries before encountering the Chinese 
>import.  It is also common English practice to refer to 'herbal teas', and 
>17th century English explorers described the similar practices of North 
>American Indians as "making a tea from xxx".  That suggests that, if making 
>herbal teas was a practice in England (and other places in northern Europe) 
>before the trade with China in the 13th century, the term "tea" became the 
>term for the practice after the Chinese product became dominant.  Whatever the 
>former term was, it fell into disuse.  (The previous term was probably more 
>like 'brew' or 'potion', which also suggest that there may have been another 
>reason why 'tea' became an acceptable term, the earlier terms and the often me
>   dicinal purposes of such brews being associated with 'witchcraft'.)  This 
>is exactly the kind of thing the authors refer to as creating the "half life" 
>of words.
>
> Is there a lesson for ontologies in this?  Or is this yet more "fun with 
>linguistics"?
>
> -Ed
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
>> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F Sowa
>> Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2013 11:28 AM
>> To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] 15,000-year-old ancestral language
>>
>> Pat C, Matthew, Ed,
>>
>> PC
>>> The word "bark" (or "barking") is not included in the Longman defining
>>> vocabulary.
>> I believe that they meant 'bark' in the sense of the outer covering of trees.
>> Its survival in northern Eurasia is probably due to the importance of birch 
>bark
>> in pre-industrial societies.  For examples, see
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_bark
>>
>> PC
>>> the notion of animal sounds being very basic had not occurred to me,
>>> nor appeared in the works I have seen.
>> But the way animal sounds are represented as words in any language is
>> extremely variable.  It depends on which sounds are considered important,
>> how they're interpreted, and what patterns of phonology match those
>> interpretations.  Just consider all the word forms that mimic the sounds of
>> animals in English and other languages.
>>
>>> Did water and tea really not make the list? Tea especially.
>> The word for tea in most languages is borrowed from Chinese.
>> Traders who went by sea to southern China adopted words like 'tea' from
>> Cantonese.  Those that traded with the north, borrowed words like 'cha' or
>> 'chai' from Mandarin.
>>
>> There are exceptions, such as 'herbata' in Polish.  Poland is on the border
>> between Russian 'chai' and German 'Tee'.
>>
>> As for water, it is so common that it appears in many different forms with
>> different words.  Which one becomes the generic term is accidental.  The
>> English 'water' is cognate with the Greek 'hydor' and the Latin 'unda' 
>(wave) -
>> - not Latin 'aqua'.
>>
>> EJB
>>> And in the latter half of the 20th century it became commonplace in
>>> our trade to re-invent the same old wheels every 5-10 years with a
>>> whole new set of terms to suggest that there was a "new" technology.
>> That's true, but the core vocabulary changes much more slowly.
>> Japanese, for example, has a huge number of words borrowed from
>> Chinese, but they still have a strong native core.  Now they're borrowing so
>> many words from English that the older generation of Japanese can't read
>> their daily newspapers.
>>
>> By the way, their words for tea and rice are borrowed from Chinese, but they
>> are also using the word 'raisu', which was first borrowed in the phrase 'kari
>> raisu'.
>>
>> John
>>
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