[lit-ideas] One, Two, Many
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 20:14:47 EDT
Andreas reported:
>The language, Pirahã, is known as a "one, two, many" language
>because it only contains words for "one" and "two" -- for all other
>numbers, a single word for "many" is used. "There are not
>really occasions in their daily lives where the Pirahã need to
>count."
Geary comments:
>Why, in other words, should humanity
>have ever thought of naming units? Or even thinking "units."
Strictly, the 'many' word does not, I submit, translate (strictly) as
_"many"_ but, if you wish, as "n > 2". That is, "1" and "2" (or rather their
English and Piranha equivalents, 'one' and 'two') are _cardinals_, while 'many'
is
notably _not_ a cardinal -- it belongs to a different conceptual space, and
the anthropologists are too fast in erasing conceptual distinctions here. One
scale is:
<... 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1>
-- and 'many' and 'few' belong in _another_ scale. Note that in English
_three_ can be 'many', as in the idiom: "two's company, three's a crowd".
"Many",
rather, is, if you wish, a pleonetetic quantifier (so aptly named by P. T.
Geach in _Logic Matters, 1977). It belongs to a scale with 'few', not with
'one' or 'two':
<many, few>
The scales are represented as ordered pairs, for the purpose of implicature.
Thus, if a Piranha speaker says
"I caught many fish"
we can not deduce he did not catch one fish, or two fish. Indeed, he _must_
have caught at least two fish (and at least one more) to use the cardinal that
Andreas Ramos reports as "many". The problems of numerals and implicature is
discussed at length in S. Levinson, The Theory of Generalised Conversational
Implicature (MIT). -- Cheers,
JL
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