Re: Re: help wanted

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

> Of course, there is a tradeoff here between cultural neutrality,
> simplicity, and precision; the most culturally neutral design would
> be to ignore the issue and let each speaker use the words in the most
> natural manner for that speaker (with a little more dialog or precise
> technical words needed if the ambiguity is important); precision would
> pick one culture's model and establish that as The Definition.  Or one
> could require technical terms at all times, possibly encumbering the
> language with too many possible words for `arm'.

    While I care little about "pure cultural neutrality", and can probably
accept any of the discussed definitions for 'arm' and 'morning', I find
this argument to be faulty.  There is communication only if the listener
receives approximately the same image as the speaker started with, and
if the meaning of the words are highly speaker-frame-of-reference 
oriented, then every listener has to know the speaker's frame of
reference.  The boundary/limit/extent issue is by no means trivial.
I am reminded of the humorous skit I heard:
    A couple looking for a night's lodging, go into a motel that
    advertises unbelievable rates, confirm the rates, commit to
    renting a room, and then find out that walls for the room are
    an extra cost option.

    An abundance of terms, each with slightly different connotations,
should be an asset, not a liability.  English, the leading international
language, has the worlds largest vocabulary due to absorbing the
vocabularies from a couple of other languages.  Maybe the success of
English is inspite of the size of its vocabulary, or maybe it is
because of it, or maybe it is just independent of it.  I am culturally
biased to not support frugality of vocabulary.

    thank you for this forum,
        Arthur Protin