An interesting page on language size
http://www.lingholic.com/how-many-words-do-i-need-to-know-the-955-rule-in-language-learning-part-2/
has a table with many of the major languages summarized. (01)
On 13/12/2013 1:55 AM, John F Sowa wrote:
> Ed,
>
> I'm sorry that I used the word 'vocabulary'. I had no intention of
> defining that word in a technical sense. I'll restate the points I
> was trying to make without using it:
>
> 1. No fixed, finite set of symbols of any kind, organized in any kind
> of language or logic, can be adequate to describe precisely a
> continuous, dynamically changing system.
>
> 2. Human languages are remarkably flexible systems, which use and
> reuse a relatively small set of symbols to characterize an
> amazingly large amount of experience -- namely, anything that
> anybody might ever say about anything.
>
> 3. The reason why languages are so flexible is that the symbols are
> never precisely defined. Their meanings *must* vary in order to
> support that flexibility.
>
> For supporting details, my position has a strong overlap with the
> article by Adam Kilgarriff, "I don't believe in word senses":
> http://www.kilgarriff.co.uk/Publications/1997-K-CHum-believe.pdf
>
>> English is not really unique in the linguistic impacts of invasions, etc.
> That's true. But the developments of the past 1200 years have made
> English unique in having (a) the largest dictionary of any language
> in the world, and (b) a structure that allows new additions from any
> source to slip into the syntactic patterns of the language.
>
>> Modern French is primarily derived from Latin, yes, but much less so
>> than Spanish and Italian, precisely because France was Celtic longer
>> than the others, and suffered many more Germanic invasions and even one
>> somewhat successful Moorish invasion.
> Yes. But those early influences were fully assimilated by 1066, when
> English was just beginning its major overhauls.
>
>> Even so, the eventual dominance of the Langue d'Oil (Paris) over the
>> Langue d'Oc (Provençal) was slow in coming and primarily a consequence
>> of centering the administration in Paris.
> All the Romance languages have very similar structure. When I was
> visiting Argentina, one of the people I was talking with said that
> many of the Italian immigrants never learned Spanish -- their
> Italian just became more Spanish-like over time. But the German
> immigrants either learned Spanish or they didn't. A continuous
> transformation was not possible.
>
> But the impact of French caused English to lose the ability to form
> new words from native roots. Just look at the number of distinct
> morphemes in that German example:
>
> Leben-s-ver-sicher-ung-s-ge-sell-shaft-s-an-ge-stell-t-er
>
> In German and Anglo-Saxon, those little pieces can be combined to form
> new words. Russian and many other languages can also do that.
>
> English lost that ability. But as Calvin said to Hobbes, "Verbing
> weirds language": http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/01/25
> There are no ifs, ands, or buts about that point.
>
>> The evolution of all languages is very much tied up with the history
>> of the speakers and their institutions. We can argue about the special
>> cases, but the important thing is that we agree that the history of the
>> speakers does not stop, so the evolution does not stop, and for that
>> reason, no dictionary will be entirely stable for any length of time.
> I agree. But I still maintain that the French attempt to "control"
> their language was a mistake. It enables modern French speakers
> to read their classical literature more easily than modern English
> speakers read Shakespeare. But it restricted the flexibility of the
> French language to adapt to the future.
>
> John
>
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> (02)
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Ron Wheeler
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phone: 866-970-2435, ext 102 (03)
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