Dear Antonia,
Thank you very much for your reply.
My (perhaps entirely unhelpful) first reaction to this is that Sanskrit, due to its history and stylistic conventions, has many more words for pretty much anything than most other languages do, literary/ancient or not.
But does it, then, mean, that if there really are more words for psychological phenomena in Sanskrit, it is psychologically richer than other languages? Because if they are there, it does not matter, how they "got there", in a psychological sense...
Also, my guiding principle in the questions you ask would be to make sure I keep questions of language/grammar and of literature/style very clearly separate.
After many years of debates on the nature of language and human consciousness with colleagues from the fields of linguistics, psychology, philosophy, biology etc. I have come to see a language as a dynamic unity of four components: phonetics, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Without any of those a system wouldn't be a language, a natural language (morphology does not seem to be essential, as there are languages that do well (almost) without it, such as Chinese). If we look at Sanskrit through that lens, it would be obvious that it is its rich semantics and especially pragmatics (ways of conveying an intention, intended meaning through context, quite independently of a grammatical form of an expression) that create a rich psychological environment/interface. I would understand the written lexicon and a body of texts as some "visible", "sensible" embodiment of a language's semantics and pragmatics. It is important to remember, I believe, that a language can have no writing, no written and even orally codified grammar, be entirely oral, as languages of indigenous tribes in Tanzania and Amazon rainforest. What is left then, is just what you can do with a language, what you can convey and express (which reminds me of Austin's "How to Do Things with Words").
Regarding the Sanskrit lexicon you suggest that it was the writers' need to be innovative, that expanded it. I don't know which percentage in the Sanskrit corpus should be occupied by religious, ritual, spiritual, philosophical etc. literature, but I suppose that it is a considerable part (if not major). Did the Indian spiritual seekers, priests, philosophers, religious adepts, scholars, scientists and other writers of the kind, who had produced a wealth of scientific, psychological and philosophical terms and conceptions, many of which had come to play the central role in classical Indian world-view, also feel the need to be just "innovative", in your opinion?
Kind regards,
Gleb Sharygin
Dear Gleb,
I dimly remember the study that I read some 15 years ago by an Indian scholar by the last name Basu (or Vasu), that estimated that Sanskrit has about 30-40% more psychologically relevant terms/words, than classical languages (i.e. Greek and Latin), and 80% more than modern European languages.
My (perhaps entirely unhelpful) first reaction to this is that Sanskrit, due to its history and stylistic conventions, has many more words for pretty much anything than most other languages do, literary/ancient or not.
Also, my guiding principle in the questions you ask would be to make sure I keep questions of language/grammar and of literature/style very clearly separate. The one truly linguistic aspect of a language that could express its 'psychological complexity' to me would be its lexicon (unless we were to consider morphemes such as inclusive 'we' vs exclusive 'we' that are found in some languages, but not e.g. Sanskrit; or perhaps verbal moods that distinguish between 'would', 'could' and 'should', all expressed by the same verbal category in Classical Sanskrit). The main distinguishing features of the Sanskrit lexicon (I am here thinking especially of the fact that it has such a beautiful wealth of synonyms) seem to be due to the pressure to be innovative that writers using a grammatically fixed language could only channel in a limited variety of ways.
That said, I would be greatly interested in literature that shows my curmudgeonly attitude to be wrong:-).
All the very best,
Antonia
But all my attempts at finding that study failed. I would be very grateful if someone helped me to identify that study or suggested something recent and authoritative on the subject. I would be grateful for any comments as well.
Kind regards,
Gleb Sharygin
PhD Candidate
Institut fur Indologie und Tibetologie
LMU München
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