4 ms·
If you push it to the extreme, a language only needs 2 words: 0 and 1. It seems to me that there is a lot more than 120 distinct concepts you need to handle th
by gutnor 11y ago
If you push it to the extreme, a language only needs 2 words: 0 and 1.
It seems to me that there is a lot more than 120 distinct concepts you need to handle the modern world, even basically - so if you are using only 120 word, you must must have to combine some in a specific fixed fashion that will always represent that concept. At that point, shouldn´t that be considered a word ?
Well, actually I should probably read the article and see what people with degree on the subject have to say.
- schoen 11y agoThere are some sequences of toki pona words that have a fixed or conventional meaning that you might not be able to be confident of just by knowing the meaning of the component parts, like telo nasa 'alcoholic drink' (lit. 'crazy water'), jan pona 'friend' (lit. 'good person'), jan lawa 'ruler, government official' (lit. 'head person'), nasin sewi 'religion' (lit. 'noble path'), meli olin 'girlfriend, wife' (lit. 'love woman'). You can see some official glossaries of these phrases as of 2010 at https://web.archive.org/web/20100702170542/http://en.tokipona.org/wiki/Category:Vocabulary_topics https://web.archive.org/web/20100702170542/http://en.tokipon... I've definitely heard the claim that these ought to be considered words because speakers need to learn them separately.