Posted by Dave Thewlis on November 09, 2000 at 19:18:47 from 63.200.128.218:
In Reply to: Re: Eskimo vocabulary posted by Mike on November 09, 2000 at 07:12:41:
Curiously, I remember this from reading a bit about etymology when I was about 17
(in this context "reading" simply means reading; I don't use it in the British sense
of scholarly endeavor (or endeavour)). At that time (late 50s) the "eskimo" language was held to
be polysynthetic rather than agglutinative; polysynthetic languages were supposed to be ones which
originally were agglutinative, but over time the multi-word assemblies had become so
familiar that the original roots had been lost and only the smoothed-down assemblies
remained. This was the "explanation" for the alleged many words for snow in "eskimo",
each one having a specific meaning such as "snow too deep to cut a hole and fish" and
so forth, while having lost the original root of "snow".
Curiously, this was also put forth as a possible explanation why "eskimos" made such
good machine mechanics - the hypothesis was that the nature of their language made them
skilled at seeing the relationship of things rather that the discrete things in isolation.
My recollection was that they cited several north polar expeditions which had employed
"eskimos" as mechanics and drivers and found them remarkable in the quickness with which
they picked up the skills and the depth of their understanding and abilities, especially
without formal training or explanatory manuals.
I cannot remember the source I read for all this, but obviously it relied in part on the
"great eskimo snow hoax" theory.