Re: Comparison of philosophical languages

On Wed, Jan 22, 2003 at 01:06:18AM +0100, Andrew Nowicki wrote:
[snip]
> I have already admitted in this thread that my
> names of vegetables are not good. Maybe you can
> come up with better names?
[snip]

I think it's not just vegetable names that are problematic. The rules of
compound word formation are (at least in part) responsible for such
difficulties. Whether it's cold vegetable or watery religious symbol,
these names are basically arbitrary (as nouns in any language would be);
however, because of the way they are formed, the (IMHO overly) regular
constituents of it is overly suggestive to a listener -- the listener then
tries to extrapolate the meaning, but because it is not precise, he/she is
unlikely to hit upon the right definition.

I'd suggest you seriously consider/adapt Joe Fatula's proposal. It
addresses this problem right at the root, even if it is not a perfect
solution yet. Sometimes it is good to have regularly analysed roots; such
as a common suffix for vegetable, or for man (as in policeman, airman,
etc.). But the arbitrary part of the word should be just that: arbitrary.
It may seem counterintuitive, but it is in fact more memorable that way.

For a concrete example, take Mandarin's vegetable names. You have
/su1tsai4/ and /pao4tsai4/. The common suffix /tsai4/ just means
"vegetable". The first syllable is, in fact, completely arbitrary, just as
the name "potato" is arbitrary--you cannot analyse it into root forms. But
after one encounter with a /su1tsai4/ and being told what its name was,
you'd remember it very easily. Incidentally, there is a meaning behind the
word; but I don't (and don't need to) know what it is to remember the
name. The mind associates /su1tsai4/ with the shape, color, texture of the
vegetable, and that's good enough.

Now suppose Mandarin has a more "consistent" way of naming vegetables. So
you might have names like /ching1su1tsai4/, /ching1pao4tsai4/,
/ching1mu4tsai4/, etc.. After a while, all those /ching1/'s become quite
tiresome and redundant, and people would have trouble remembering, did the
recipe say /ching1su1tsai4/ or was it /ching1pao4tsai4/? The names are too
similar to be easily distinguishable. It will take a lot more effort to
remember the names, and to remember *instances* of the names, such as when
they are mentioned in a recipe. Names like /su1tsai4/ and /pao4tsai4/ are
much easier to distinguish, because they are prominently different. Yet
you *still* have the advantage of the common suffix /tsai4/, which tells
you immediately that this is a vegetable.

In other words, regularize the suffix so that a learner can immediately
tell what general category the noun belongs to. But don't regularize the
first part of the word, which should be as unique as possible. It's
similar to designing logos, as I've mentioned before. You want your logo
to stand out from everybody else, so that it is *memorable*. That's the
non-regularized part. But you don't want to make your logo so different
that it is ambiguous what it stands for. That's the regularized suffix
part.


T

--
2+2=4. 2*2=4. 2^2=4. Therefore, +, *, and ^ are the same operation.