Posted by Robert Dilley on November 08, 2000 at 18:01:34 from 205.189.37.81:
In Reply to: Re: Eskimo vocabulary posted by Mike F. on November 08, 2000 at 00:07:50:
According to Pullum's article, there are just two root words for snow in Inuktitut: quanik meaning "snow in the air" and aput meaning "snow on the ground". (It's more complicated than that, but I'm a geographer, not a linguist). The citation I gave is to a shorter form of Pullum's paper. Apparently there is a fuller version in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 7, 1989. I don't know what version is in the book Ian cited.
Don't we get onto interesting topics? What we need now is for some of our Australian colleagues to give us a discourse on the true meaning of Corroboree.