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Chapter 2 - The worlds of words

Lexical typology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2013

Edith A. Moravcsik
Edith A. Moravcsik
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
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Summary

Chapter outline

What do languages have words for? We will consider similarities and differences in vocabulary among languages in six semantic fields: body parts, kinship terms, personal pronouns, numerals, antonymic adjectives, and color words.

Summary generalizations will be presented about markedness relations and about the relationship between words and thoughts.

Introduction

Suppose you were to design a language that is easy to speak and understand. What would the words be like? Here are two features of what seems to be an ideal vocabulary.

  1. (i) There is a word for everything.

  2. (ii) From the way a word sounds, it is easy to tell what it means.

Let us see if these characteristics hold for English.

(A) WORDS FOR EVERYTHING?

Back in the 1980s, comedian and actor Rich Hall provided abundant evidence to show that English did not have words for everything. In his TV program and in his books (e.g. Hall 1984 ), he entertained his audience with “sniglets,” which he defined as “any word that does not appear in the dictionary but should.” Here are some of these tongue-in-cheek creations, proposed by either Hall himself and by other people who subsequently picked up on the idea.

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Introducing Language Typology , pp. 25 - 64
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

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  • The worlds of words
  • Edith A. Moravcsik, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
  • Book: Introducing Language Typology
  • Online publication: 05 February 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511978876.004
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  • The worlds of words
  • Edith A. Moravcsik, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
  • Book: Introducing Language Typology
  • Online publication: 05 February 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511978876.004
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The worlds of words
  • Edith A. Moravcsik, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
  • Book: Introducing Language Typology
  • Online publication: 05 February 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511978876.004
Available formats
×