Re: Orange, Naranja, Color and fruit. Which came first?
It seems like the circle of the chicken and the egg, but it isn't. Language is shaped according to reality, the referents, the environment. Language doesn't not shape our environment.
The discussion about language shaping our minds is in another thread ;)
Re: Orange, Naranja, Color and fruit. Which came first?
Language was created to be able to name things. Hence, I'd say nouns came first, adjectives in second place. Every sentence says something about a noun. So, with that in mind, I'd say the fruit came first, and then the color.
Re: Orange, Naranja, Color and fruit. Which came first?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
francot
Every sentence says something about a noun.
How would you identify the statement of that linguistic universal? For instance, the sentence "it's warm" would fit it?
Re: Orange, Naranja, Color and fruit. Which came first?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
danielr
How would you identify the statement of that linguistic universal? For instance, the sentence "it's warm" would fit it?
Well, I'd say the noun is implicit. It should probably be something like "The weather is warm", or "The air is warm," but implicitly you're stating something about a noun.
Re: Orange, Naranja, Color and fruit. Which came first?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
danielr
It seems like the circle of the chicken and the egg, but it isn't. Language is shaped according to reality, the referents, the environment. Language doesn't not shape our environment.
The discussion about language shaping our minds is in another thread ;)
Which thread is that?
Sounds like a very interesting subject. If you can copy the link!
About the question at hand, I did some research over the weekend and found out that in ancient Japanese, the word for the color Orange didn't came from the fruit, but from the sky.
Later on to mingle more with western culture it was adopted to use Orange as fruit for the color.
I'll see to get the ancient asian KANJI for this later on the month from an Historian friend of mine.
Re: Orange, Naranja, Color and fruit. Which came first?
OK, that could work. I have to check again my notes from the linguistics classes I took.