Web Activity 13.3 Words and culture

Below are some documented differences in the lexicons of the world’s languages. Which of these differences plausibly reflect some nontrivial cultural differences, and which of them do you think are arbitrary (or do differences within a domain reflect a mix of cultural and arbitrary reasons)? Explain. What kinds of evidence would you look for in order to support a cultural account?

A. Body parts

Languages differ quite a bit in which parts of the body receive their own words (Majid, 2010). For example:

• In Jahai, a language of Malaysia, there is no word for the head. The closest candidate refers only to the top of the head. Generally, the language seems to carve up the body into smaller units than English does. For instance, there are also no words for arms or legs, but there are words for upper arm, lower arm, hand, upper-leg, lower-leg, and foot.
• Lavukaleve, a Papuan language of the Solomon islands, has one general word for arms and legs (corresponding to the English word limb) but not have separate words to distinguish arms from legs.
• Only about two-thirds of the world’s languages have a separate word for hands. The other one-third collapses the concept of a hand together with the word for lower arm or arm.
• At least 70 languages, including Warlpiri, a language of Australia, do not have a word to differentiate fingers from hands.

B. Kinship terms

Languages across the world differ in which dimensions of family relationships (gender, generation, relationship by blood or marriage, etc.) figure in assigning distinct words for relatives. For example:

• In Hawaiian, the same word is used for father and uncle, and there is a single word for siblings and cousins.
• In Turkish, not only are siblings distinguished from cousins, but there are also distinct words for your father’s brother and mother’s brother (uncles). Aunts are also distinguished in this way.
• In Yanomamo, there is a single word for father and father’s brother. This word is distinct from the one for mother’s brother. Similarly, there is a single word for mother and mother’s sister that is distinct from father’s sister.

More examples can be seen at the following website, developed by Brian Schwimmer of the University of Manitoba:

https://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/anthropology/kintitle.html

C. Words for emotions and mental states

Across the world’s languages, there is quite a lot of variation in how emotions and mental states are described (Goddard, 2010). Generally, languages seem to have words for the basic concepts of think, feel, know, and want. But differences abound. For example:

• Malay has no equivalent to the English word surprise. The closest candidate can only be used in a negative context, whereas in English, being surprised can be positive, negative, or neutral.
• Many languages do not have a word that is exactly equivalent to happy. In Russian, the closest counterpart suggests a more intense emotion, like the English word joy.
• In English, we use the words mind and heart in very distinct ways (think, for instance, of the expressions a good mind versus a good heart). In Korean, both of these notions are approximately (but not equally) covered by the single word maum.
• In English, there is a single word know to express familiarity with a person or a place as well as familiarity with facts or expertise in some domain. (I know my neighbor, I know he is guilty, I know French.) Some languages, such as French, use one word (connaître) for familiarity with a person or place, distinguishing it from the knowing of facts or having expertise (savoir).
• As you saw in Chapter 5 (Language at Large 5.1), there is no English counterpart to the Czech word lítost, which blends together elements of grief, regret, and longing.

D. Verbs of motion

There is a large amount of variation across languages in the information that is carried by verbs that describe motion. For example:

• English tends to encode extremely fine distinctions about the manner of motion. The French word bondir, for instance, does not distinguish between the manners that are inherent in the English words jump, leap, bound, spring, skip, or gambol.
• At the same time, English can use the single vague word go where other languages, such as German, force their speakers to distinguish whether the going happened on foot (gehen) or through some other means such as bicycle, vehicle, horse, etc. (fahren).
• Some languages, like Spanish and Greek, tend to pack information about the path of movement into the verb itself, whereas in English, information about path is often relegated to a prepositional phrase outside of the verb. Where an English speaker might use an expression like go up the stairs, Spanish speakers would use the verb ascendar (ascend).

References

Goddard, C. (2010) Universals and variation in the lexicon of mental state concepts. In B. C. Malt & Phillip Wolff (Eds.), Words and the Mind, (pp. 72–92). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Majid, A. (2010) Words for parts of the body. In B. C. Malt & Phillip Wolff (Eds.), Words and the Mind, (pp. 58–71). Oxford: Oxford University Press.