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From: robboy@bend.ucsd.edu (William Robboy)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,comp.cog-eng,sci.psychology,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Computer Languages and the Sapir/Whorf hypothesis
Keywords: computer languages, Sapir/Whorf hypothesis, linguistics, snow, eskimos
Message-ID: <12387@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Date: 23 Aug 90 21:03:32 GMT
References: <1445@anaxagoras.ils.nwu.edu> <1990Aug22.194652.7421@fs-1.iastate.edu> <3279@skye.ed.ac.uk>
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In article <3279@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>[Repost of Alain Cedelle's posting from last May]
>>From: cedelle@yin.irisa.fr (Alain Cedelle)
>>Newsgroups: eunet.politics
>>Subject: 31 Eskimo words about snow.
>>Message-ID: <1990May30.124940.22664@irisa.fr>
>> Here is an answer to the old question about the number of words describing
>> snow in Eskimo languages:
>>
>> These are 31 words about snow, from the Inuit, Aivilik and Igloolik languages. 
>> from J.  MacDonald from igloolik research center.
>> (this list is probably not exhaustive)

Indeed. Probably they are not exhaustively listable.

>>[list follows]

I don't know any Eskimo languages, but I've seen enough work on
them to bet my bottom dollar that few if any of the words in this
list are unanalyzable wholes, and that they are probably concatenations
of multiple morphemes. Eskimo languages are polysynthetic. Words
can be formed by recursively concatenating pieces of word to produce
things that would be whole complex phrases or sentences in
languages more like English. There is potentially an infinite number
of words about anything. The fact that there are so many words
about snow reflects Eskimo word-formation in general rather than 
Eskimo cognition about snow. If a very large number of
such words were recorded from spontaneous utterances (rather than
intentionally elicited in linguistic fieldwork), it indicates
merely that the topic of snow comes up a lot. Which I imagine it
does up there no matter what language you're speaking.

Geoff Pullum wrote an entertainingly scathing article on this
topic. Here is the citation from Current Contents:
1. PULLUM GK.
     THE GREAT ESKIMO VOCABULARY HOAX.
     NATURAL LANGUAGE & LINGUISTIC THEORY, 1989 MAY, V7 N2:275-281.

Bill Robboy	robboy@bend.ucsd.edu