Re: CHAT: Religion, Philosophy & Politics

Hi, all,

I'm not sure there is a minimum vocabulary for hunter-gatherers.   Both
hunters and gatherers would need sophisticated ways of describing terrain,
its features, and pathways through it.   If you had to find edible plants
instead of cultivating them, you'd need a full set of spatial,
topographical, and ecological terms.   Same with finding game animals.

Names of specific species would be useful because specific species have
different sizes, flavors, and places & times when they are available.
Hunter gatherers would even need anatomical vocabulary, given that different
parts of a plant or animal might have different uses.

While hunter-gatherers would not need literacy or sophisticated formal
discourse, whatever language they spoke would have to match the descriptive
power of a natlang.   Why?   Because even though the hunter gatherer's
enviornment has fewer artifacts than urban humanity's, it does not have
fewer important things.   Talking about the weather, the sun, the animals,
the grass, and the trees is more interesting when knowledge of such things
means the difference between life and death.

In my opinion, the proposed "minimum" vocabulary underestimates the
sophistication needed for a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.   Forgive this
speculation:    This minimum set would be more realistic if we had the
speed, strength, teeth, and claws of a bear.   Bears gather and hunt too;
they're omnivores, like us.   But if they were as shrimpy and helpless as
human beings, they'd die for lack of tools and many, many words.

> Some guesses for minimal hunter-gatherering vocabulary:
>   edible/non-edible distinction (two morphemes)
>   easy prey (something small and slow enought to get)
>   quicky prey (not easy to get due to speed)
>   big prey (a prey that can't be get without colaboration)
>   surround
>   go over there
>   look!
>   red (color of edible fruits)
>   inmature
>   fruit/bare
>   herb
>   root
>   larv/insect
>   eat
>   baby
>   woman
>   man
>   dangerous small creature (one that can hurt me, but won't eat me)
>   dangerous big animal (one that can eat me)
>   you
>   him/her
>   fellow
>   strange
> Make all this in a baby talk ;)
> -- Carlos Th
>