Re: Bootstrapping a cooperative conlang

In a message dated 11/17/2007 3:44:56 PM Central Standard Time,
fiziwig@YAHOO.COM writes:


> If I am a visitor to Nepal and I ask what the local word for mouse is, I
> don't
> need to be told what a mouse IS, I only need to be told what the WORD for
> mouse
> is. The kind of dictionary project I'm discussing here begins with the
> assumption that, in spite of not sharing a language in common, all users of
> the
> dictionary will have a certain level of shared world experience. Thus the
> conlang edition of the dictionary assumes I know what a mouse IS, and only
> needs to point to some symbol that evokes that knowledge and binds it to the
> given word.
>
> While reading Wierzbicka's definition of "mouse" at some point I gathered
> enough information to conclude which "thing-I-already-know" is being
> described.
> From that point on, the rest of the definition is irrelevant, and I can
> safely
> ignore it. The rest of the definition may, indeed, tell me things about what
> a
> mouse IS, but I already know those things.
>
> Anything beyond that should be looked for in the conlang edition of the
> encyclopedia, rather than the dictionary.
>
You're talking about the word "mouse", as if that had an exact equivalent in
all other natlangs.  Such is not the case.  Without all those extra details,
many of the nuances of the word for mouse are going to be missing, and your
hosts in Nepal may be as confused by your request for a word for mouse as the
natives of Australia were when asked for the word for kangaroo (their answer was
"I don't know").

None of the information in Wierzbicka's explication of "mouse" belongs in an
encyclopedia.  The information is inherent in the meaning of "mouse".
Virtually all modern dictionaries, though, do include lots of information
that properly belongs in an encyclopedia, while omitting a large part of the true
meaning of the words.

stevo


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