Re: New Language Sketch (was Re: Conlang Gender)

On Tue, 30 Nov 1999, Nik Taylor wrote:

>"Thomas R. Wier" wrote:
>> I would think that abstract concepts should be last on the list, and that
>> if you're going to have a separate category for them, you'd have them
>> placed after inanimate objects.
>
>Hmm, you might be right there.  Concepts following tangible objects does
>make sense now that I think about it.
What makes "sense" for us (or rather _you_) may not necessarily make
sense for the speakers of this language.  (Whose lang. is it?  I
missed the beginning of the thread.)  Anyway, in Anthro. class we saw
a video on how different folks group things - people in Australia,
Africa and a few other places (all "natives") and a group of modernly
educated Europeans were all given a load of different objects and
asked to sort them.  Objects included were things like tools (knife,
hammer) food (piece of meat, an exotic fruit) and various other
things.  Point is, you'll notice how I sorted them: "obvious"  tools
and "obvious" food items.  The Australian in the movie threw the knife
and the meat together right away (for obvious reasons), put the hammer
with some other object, and had no idea what to make of the fruit.
Details may be a bit off (it's been a few years since seeing it), but
the point stands.  There may be a good reason abstracts fit in the way
they do.

Padraic.