Tolkien’s Sindarin (and, IIRC, Welsh) have two plurals, one for more than one and another for everything in a class. I am very envious. My ideal language would have a bunch of plurals—the two from Sindarin, plus “a noticeable minority” and “the vast majority”. I might even split “everything in a class” into “all we have seen” and “all by nature”.
Why do you need grammatical inflection when you can just use quantifiers (“several sheep”, “all sheep”, “many sheep”, “most sheep”)?
Because having rationalist features built into the language means that it’s harder to slip in irrational premises. I don’t know whether there’s be research on whether native speakers of languages with evidentials think more clearly about the sources of their information.
Why the same thing would count as “built into the language” if expressed in one word but not if expressed in two? After all, spelling conventions for separating words are partly arbitrary—a language might have stuff like “severalsheep”, “allsheep”, etc.
It’s a question of what’s obligatory. Admittedly, this doesn’t have to be handled by what’s a single word. In English, you have to introduce nouns with ‘a’ or ‘the’. I’m not sure how valuable this is—many, perhaps most, languages don’t have that feature, but in English, you’re stuck with indicating whether something you’re talking about is especially important.
In the same spirit, you have to make an effort to avoid indicating a person’s gender.
In English, you can say “men do x” or “women do y” without a built in obligation to indicate or to notice to yourself whether you mean all, all that you’ve noticed, all inevitably, most, or some. I think not having a requirement to be clear about such things leads to a lot of stereotyping and pontificating.
In English, you can say “men do x” or “women do y” without a built in obligation to indicate or to notice to yourself whether you mean all, all that you’ve noticed, all inevitably, most, or some. I think not having a requirement to be clear about such things leads to a lot of stereotyping and pontificating.
I don’t think it’s just a matter of language. In Italian it’s extremely rare to use a noun without an article as the subject of a sentence—you’d use the definite article (lit. ‘the men’) if you mean something like ‘typical men’ (as in ‘men have opposable thumbs’—male amputees do exist but are irrelevant to the point being made) and a ‘partitive article’ (or an indefinite pronoun such as ‘someone’, rewording the sentence such as ‘there are men who’, etc.) when you mean ‘certain men’—and yet people use the former all the time even when they have very little evidence that something applies to an entire reference class except a few irrelevant exceptions.
In the same spirit, you have to make an effort to avoid indicating a person’s gender.
English is a lot better in that respect than most languages in the Indo-European family (and Hebrew, just because I happen to know it). Many languages have mandatory gender for all nouns. Not just “he” vs. “she”, but “he-chair” vs “she-sun”. In those languages you can’t talk about something without knowing its gender—masculine, feminine or neuter. You can’t address a person in Hebrew without knowing their gender—not even to ask for their name. (Think how fun that makes replying to email.)
My two mother tongues are Russian and Hebrew, but I read and write more in English. Every time I need to write something in Hebrew, I become angry at how gender forces its way to my attention.
ETA: I’m sure you know this already, but it was worth saying clearly.
Why do you need grammatical inflection when you can just use quantifiers (“several sheep”, “all sheep”, “many sheep”, “most sheep”)?
Because having rationalist features built into the language means that it’s harder to slip in irrational premises. I don’t know whether there’s be research on whether native speakers of languages with evidentials think more clearly about the sources of their information.
Why the same thing would count as “built into the language” if expressed in one word but not if expressed in two? After all, spelling conventions for separating words are partly arbitrary—a language might have stuff like “severalsheep”, “allsheep”, etc.
It’s a question of what’s obligatory. Admittedly, this doesn’t have to be handled by what’s a single word. In English, you have to introduce nouns with ‘a’ or ‘the’. I’m not sure how valuable this is—many, perhaps most, languages don’t have that feature, but in English, you’re stuck with indicating whether something you’re talking about is especially important.
In the same spirit, you have to make an effort to avoid indicating a person’s gender.
In English, you can say “men do x” or “women do y” without a built in obligation to indicate or to notice to yourself whether you mean all, all that you’ve noticed, all inevitably, most, or some. I think not having a requirement to be clear about such things leads to a lot of stereotyping and pontificating.
I don’t think it’s just a matter of language. In Italian it’s extremely rare to use a noun without an article as the subject of a sentence—you’d use the definite article (lit. ‘the men’) if you mean something like ‘typical men’ (as in ‘men have opposable thumbs’—male amputees do exist but are irrelevant to the point being made) and a ‘partitive article’ (or an indefinite pronoun such as ‘someone’, rewording the sentence such as ‘there are men who’, etc.) when you mean ‘certain men’—and yet people use the former all the time even when they have very little evidence that something applies to an entire reference class except a few irrelevant exceptions.
Thanks. That’s a good example of mental defaults pulling in one direction even though the language is pulling in the opposite direction.
English is a lot better in that respect than most languages in the Indo-European family (and Hebrew, just because I happen to know it). Many languages have mandatory gender for all nouns. Not just “he” vs. “she”, but “he-chair” vs “she-sun”. In those languages you can’t talk about something without knowing its gender—masculine, feminine or neuter. You can’t address a person in Hebrew without knowing their gender—not even to ask for their name. (Think how fun that makes replying to email.)
My two mother tongues are Russian and Hebrew, but I read and write more in English. Every time I need to write something in Hebrew, I become angry at how gender forces its way to my attention.
ETA: I’m sure you know this already, but it was worth saying clearly.
BTW, see this.
If it’s built into the language then, presumably, you can’t not use it.
That’s the main difference, I think.