Xing wrote:arilando wrote:That's not true, not all language can express the range of numerals english ca, some dont have higer numerals than 3.
Of course some languages lack vocabulary for certain areas. I wrote the same kind of information, because I wanted to emphasise that languages can handle information of roughly the same complexity, and that if they don't have vocabulary for certain areas, they can borrow or create such, and incorporate it in the language. It's possible that there may be counterexamples to this theory. But the main point of my post - which was directed towards chagen - was to point at the distinction between science and aesthetic/preferential judgements.
And, in addition:
Languages without high-numeral words
can nevertheless express high numerals precisely; it just takes more-and-more-complicated phrases to do so.
Suppose a language's highest numeral is "four".
It can still express 1,048,576 as
four fours of fours of fours of fours of fours of fours of fours of fours of fours.
Clearly the speaker of such a language would be less likely to care to be precise, (and/or would likely care to be less precise), about numbers that big, than would a speaker whose language had words for all numerals less than or equal to twenty, for all multiples of twenty up to four hundred, and for all powers of twenty up to, say, the sixth power.
That's simply because the bigger a number is the less need there is to be precise about it, and also the lower the highest numeral-word is the more effort it takes to be precise about a big number.
But they could be precise if they wanted to.