Re: Localizable Sentences Experiment

From: William J Poser (wjposer@ldc.upenn.edu)
Date: Tue Apr 21 2009 - 12:08:16 CDT

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    The problem of translation is even worse than you may realize. In the
    language of the area in which I live, for example, before I can decide
    how to say "it's raining" I need to know whether the speaker is on land
    or on water. nawhulhtih means "it is raining onto land". tawhulhtih
    means "it is raining into water". And in the relatively unusual situation
    in which the rain is falling into a cave or cellar we would have
    'awhulhtih "it is raining into a hole". Similarly, we have najus
    "it is snowing onto land", tajus "it is snowing into water", 'ajus
    "it is snowing into a hole". And should we get into hail, we not only
    have those possibilities, but we have to double their number since we
    must distinguish between dense hail (e.g. 'indloo nawhulhtih = "it is
    hailing densely onto land") and sparse hail (e.g. 'indloo nanukat =
    "it is hailing sparsely onto land").

    Bill



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