Re: neat thought that came up...

["Arthur W. Protin Jr." (GC-ACCURATE) <cbmvax!uunet!PICA.ARMY.MIL!protin>]

Folks,

    Coranth <gryphon@dino.ulowell.edu> quotes me and comments 
> "Art Protin commented:
>>  Yet the size of the average person's vocabulary does
>> not vary from language to language as much as the size of the available
>> vocabulary varies.  Thus I expect that we are nearer the limits of our
>> ability to use language than we are to the limits of languages.
>
>
> The implication that I see out of this is that for each person, there is
> an approximate limit on the vocabulary that they retain per language,
> (and probably a maximum number of languages, but this is ancillary)
> and that this vocab limit is independant of the total vocabulary of the
> language.
>
> Now, if this is true, then it would be worth investigating so that we can
> generate a vocabulary that falls (in item count) BELOW the average max
> vocabulary of our target audience.

I can respond to this in many ways.  Let say then that if we do adopt
this proposal, that we choose as our target audience the more articulate
half of the set of people who have IQ's of 190 or greater.

Let me clarify two things:
    1) The data that I remember of average vocaulary sizes did not
        strongly support the claim that personal vocabulary limits were
        INDEPENDENT of total available vocabulary, simply that they
        were very SUB-LINEAR.  (However the data did not total refute
        the possibility of independence since ethnic differences in
        the importance of language skills may have, over the centuries,
        induced differences (evolutionary) in their respective gene
        pools.)
    2) I favor a language with a vocaulary larger than any single human
        can master.  (and a culture that places a relatively high degree
        of importance on language skills.)

    thank you all for this soap box,
    Art


Arthur Protin <protin@pica.army.mil>
These are my personal views and do not reflect those of my boss
or this installation.