Musings on Language

[Silvuh]

There's probably a more specific word in "Language" for what I'm getting at here, but ... Anyway.

So it was raining the other day, and I got out my umbrella. Well, half of the loops are torn on this umbrella, so I have this awkward triangle shape barely covering my body. And I said to myself, "Wow, I really need a new umbrella." That got me thinking about the word "Need".
I know there have been times before where I've said "I need X," and the other responded "You don't need X," with emphasis to distinguish between "wants and needs".
I was taught in Elementary school that the three basic needs are Water, Food, and Shelter. (I've seen Clothing listed as a need, but nudists can fair well in their communities.) Everything else is a "want". For some reason, it wasn't until the other day that I thought, "Well ... If the word 'need' can only be applied to three things, then what good of a word is that?"
And, instantly, I thought about unspoken conditionals. When we say we "need" something, it's always for some purpose. "I need a new umbrella to replace this old one; it barely keeps me dry!" To complete "replace old umbrella" you would in fact "need a new umbrella." It would be senseless to say "I want a new umbrella," in this case. (Of course, I am assuming an old umbrella will be replaced with a new one, not, like, a daily newspaper or something.)
So when we say we need something, the listener can assume there's some unspoken conditional behind that statement. There are many other instances in language where unspoken information is inherent in a statement.

Another one of my musings has been on the question "How much do you have to read?" When I said this to someone, I pondered the ambiguity of "have". I thought of two ways to interpret this: using "have" as in the sentence "I have two feet," and as in the sentence "I have to work late today." One "have" indicates possession and the other indicates obligation.
And while typing this up, I just realized ... in speech, I would shorten the obligation use to "haf'ta read?" while in the possessive case, I would say "have t'read?" Because obligation is always "have to" and ... yeah. So it would not be ambiguous if I said it aloud.


But, yes. So I am quite interested to see what all little musings you all have had on language like this.
And if you live in another country and English isn't your first language, anything you've thought about those languages will be just as welcome in this thread! In fact, I'd like to see some comparing English to other languages, too.

[Patashu]

Re: Musings on Language

Language is full of layers like this. Often it's not what you communicate, but how you do it. Sometimes context fills in gaps for you - think of times when you could replace the subject of your sentence with gibberish because of what the conversation has lead up to thus far.

[Brilliant Dynamite Neon]

Re: Musings on Language

This has a lot to do with pragmatics -- in linguistics, the way context contributes to meaning. Like Patashu said, there's a lot of implicature and/or indirect communication of things, like your unspoken conditionals. Language is, at its very core, a transmission of meaning. In practice, it often requires not only knowledge of the grammar and lexicon of a language (linguistic knowledge) but also knowledge of the context; the manner in which something is spoken, the situation of the speaker and those involved in his/her statements, the speaker's intent, etc. So with your statement, "I need a new umbrella"; that very statement has come to be indicative of your current umbrella not being of satisfactory performance, as we tend to assume (e.g "If your current umbrella is working just fine, why get another one?"). There might be reasons for getting another one other than that, but that's the conclusion at which most of us arrive. And indeed, you made that statement while caught in the rain with a broken umbrella, getting wetter by the second (poor dear). Since the purpose of an umbrella is to prevent you from getting wet, and this umbrella is not fulfilling that purpose, the unspoken conditional -- "this umbrella needs to be replaced" -- is easily inferred. Then there would be the tone of voice who delivered the statement in, your body language, and other indicators.

Words only carry so much information. We receive a lot of the meaning behind statements from the manner in which they're delivered. That's why purely textual conversation can result in a lot of misunderstandings, as, without any "real" context, we tend to filter people's words through our own emotions; what we would imagine, at the time, would be the context. Hence, the old "sarcasm over the internet" problem.

I would contribute more, but I'm really, really tired. I can see this thread going in interesting directions though.

[Litodude]

Re: Musings on Language

I'm surprised Squeek's grammar and language thread got un-stickied, I'm pretty sure there was a couple pages of discussion about this very topic.

also tl;dr

[jchinzilla]

Re: Musings on Language

i just enjoy bastardizing english like instead of using

have to - hafta
going to - gonna
got to - gotta
that's what's up - thaswassup
tryin to - tryna

[rushyrulz]

Re: Musings on Language

i just enjoy bastardizing english like instead of using

have to - hafta
going to - gonna
got to - gotta
that's what's up - thaswassup
tryin to - tryna

This happens in all languages.

[Iam90]

Re: Musings on Language

not surprised that the creator of this thread is from texas

[MrRubix]

Re: Musings on Language

Oh man to reply to this topic would require more text than I care to write.

I'll just say "Yeah, language is full of these. It arises from the inherently subjective nature of spectrums in a given meaning." Obviously "need" is an extremely strong form of "want." It isn't NECESSARY that you have an umbrella when you go out into the rain. It isn't NECESSARY that you need to eat food (you COULD die) -- but you want to survive, and so you really, really want food -- you "need" food. It's NECESSARY that we need food in order TO survive, but we say we "need food" because "we really want to survive."

Much of the "cutoffs" we derive for these terms are evolutionary, as is practically everything else in life.

But cases like this arise everywhere. Metonyms, synecdoches, etc -- also very common in our language.

[freekilltwo]

Re: Musings on Language

speaking of how something is communicated rather than what it is i remember hearing about a word in one of the chinese dialects i dont recall which one it was, but it has 2 meanings dependent upon the inflection thats placed on it, if the voice is raised to inflect the middle of the word it had one meaning and if it were at the end of the word it was another, the 2 words translated to mother or horse depending on which inflection was used, i dont remember any more than that tho but the same kinds of principals definatly apply to other languages but i cant even begin to list any more than this

[MrRubix]

Re: Musings on Language

Most Chinese dialects do that (Mandarin, Cantonese, etc), and the word you're thinking of is "ma." In first tone, "ma1," it means "mother," but "ma3" (third tone) means "horse."

Just a different way of telling words apart. We don't have that kind of system in English. We might use one word for multiple things (such as "form" or "put" or "block" or "tip"), but we tell those words apart by their context. In Chinese, the WAY you say the word matters, too.

[MixMasterLar]

Re: Musings on Language

I once took a long look at the the name/word "muse" Think about all the words derived from the it. Everytime I see "Musing", "Amused" or "Music" I have to to stop for a sec.

Also, I swear I'm the only one in Florida who uses the word "Epoch" in spoken English

[freekilltwo]

Re: Musings on Language

i seem to remember it being a diffrent word but yea thats essentially the point i was getting at but there are some phrases in english that can follow along that same principal, but thats not so much changing the meaning of a word as much as changing the intention of the phrase