Re: What does vocabulary tell us about a culture? -- Mimetic Theory and Literary Study

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Date Posted: 10:48:49 03/16/08 Sun
Author: Jonathan Dunn
Subject: Re: What does vocabulary tell us about a culture?
In reply to: Erin Risch 's message, "Re: What does vocabulary tell us about a culture?" on 21:03:05 03/13/08 Thu

I think it is possible to conclude more from the presence of a certain piece of vocabulary than from its absence. Words can fall out of usage for any number of reasons, or can be expressed by longer phrases or by idioms which aren't contained within a single lexical entry.

Languages have very different ways of saying things, especially if the languages come from different language families. Often such languages are so different that they cannot be compared. Looking for a word in one language to have an exact counterpart in another is often futile; and the absence of such a counterpart has very limited consequences.

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