问答题 We can ask a person how many children he has without going into the specific of whether they are boys and girls; but we cannot ask him how many brothers and sisters he has without getting precisely these irrelevant sub-answers and then tolling them. Now it is true that in this instance we may use the word siblings. But the very fact that this word is mainly confined to technical health-authority usage(despite our recognition of its usefulness and of our need for such a word) is an interesting indication of the way we are very largely the helpless prisoners of the language in general use around us. We like to think that we make our language as we need it, but in fact the scope for an individual to change things is very limited. Even where there would be widespread agreement that there is a linguistic deficiency, very few communities in the world seem to have settled the means whereby remedies can be agreed upon and adopted.—Thinking of Words, by Randolph QuirkQuestion: What is the theme of this short passage?无