[net.nlang] Free Stuff, Minds, and Language

steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) (08/08/84)

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     This article relates to several of	the current topics in
net.philosophy and elsewhere.  The topics are "Mind and	Brain",
"Energy", and "Free [Will Lunch	Software]".

     Different languages do not	describe the same world.  The language
determines the view of the world.  At the risk of having the posting
unread because of its length, I	have documented	this assertion with some
material from Benjamin Lee Whorf, an American linguist who was forced to
this conclusion	by his study of	Native American	languages.  I recommend
that anyone who	is interested go to the	original source.

     The article first explains	the way	time information is carried on
verbs in English and relates it	to other Indo-European languages.  Then
there is a contrast by Whorf with the Hopi system.  Finally there is a
discussion of the implications of the material.

1.  Information	Carried	With the Verb

     All human languages have some part	of speech that can be called a
verb.  It is "an action	word", just like you were taught in grade
school.	  All languages	have some means	of expressing temporal
relations.  In English,	which is a descendent of Proto Indo-European, we
have ways of ways of expressing	"tense", "mood", and "aspect".	The
verbs of all Indo-European languages have these	properties.

     In	English	there are two marked tenses, past and present.	The past
is marked with a /d/ phoneme, which is the past	morpheme.  This	means
that though we say:  -d	(please, pleased), -t (mark, marked {markt}),
and -ed	(wait, waited),	 these are predictable variations of the same
abstract grammatical entity.   A sound that is added to	a verb that
changes	its "meaning" is called	an *inflection*.  The future is
paraphrased, "he will leave soon."

     Mood is not (usually) carried by verb inflections in English.  It
is carried by "helping verbs" called "modals" these are

    will - would,
    can	- could,
    shall - should,
    may	- might,
    ought to,
    must

     People familiar with other	Indo-European languages	will have heard
of the "subjunctive mood". It is a verb	inflection that	gives the mood
that what is being talked about	is not something that has happened or
is certain to happen.  If a speaker is talking about something he or she
*hopes*	will happen the	speaker	uses the subjunctive inflection	on the
verb.	There is a remanent of this inflection in English.  We say "If I

				  -1-

were you", not "*if I was you" (in Standard American English - SAE).
Since English has many more possible (grammatical) moods than say,
Spanish	or French, a one-to-one	mapping	is not generally possible.

     Aspect is the part	of the verb that contains time line information.
In English we carry aspectual information with an auxiliary ("helping")
verb and the inflection	-ing.	One distinction	most people will be
familiar with is the "progressive",  as	in:

    1) She left.
    2) She is leaving.

     In	#1,  the action	was completed in the past.  In #2, the action is
in progress.   We have a "timeless" aspect in "she sleeps".  It	is
unspecified about exactly when she sleeps, we just know	she does it
sometimes.  This is called "the	nomic present" to contrast it with "I
see Jim," which	means that you see him right now.

     The verbs "keep", "start",	"stop",	and a few others have an extra
use as helping verbs.  In:

     3)	He keeps trying	to get it right.

     The action	is repeated over and over.   This is close to what is
called the "iterative aspect" in some languages.

     These properties of verbs,	tense, mood, and aspect	form the
constraints on our conception of time.	 Verbs had these same three
possibilities all the way back to the proto-language.  All the
descendent languages have the same possibilities. Some may have	more
tenses,	more or	different moods, more or different aspects, but	they all
have tense, mood, and aspect.

2.  Whorf on the Hopi Conception of Time

     Benjamin Lee Whorf	was a linguist that was	noted for his writings
on how language	shapes ones world-view.	 One of	his more dramatic
findings was that Hopi verbs could not be analyzed as having the same
three qualities.  In an	essay in "Language, Culture, and personality,
essays in memory of Edward Sapir," reprinted in	"Language, Thought, and
Reality"; Whorf	says of	Hopi:

    Verbs have	no  "tenses"  like  ours,  but	have  validity-forms
    ("assertions"),  aspects, and clause-linkage forms (modes),	that
    yield even greater	precision  of  speech.	 The  validity-forms
    denote  that the speaker (not the subject) reports the situation
    (answering to the  past  or	 present)  or  that  he	 expects  it
    (answering to our future) [Footnote: The expective and reportive
    assertions contrast	according to the "paramount  relation."	 The
    expective expresses	anticipation existing EARLIER than objective
    fact, and coinciding with objective	fact LATER than	 the  status

				  -2-

    quo	of the speaker,	this status quo, including all the subsumma-
    tion of the	past therin, being expressed by	the reportive.	 Our
    notion  "future" seems to represent	at once	the earlier (antici-
    pation) and	the later (afterward, what will	be), as	Hopi  shows.
    This  paradox  may	hint of	how elusive the	mystery	of real	time
    is,	and how	artificially is	is expressed by	a linear relation of
    past-present-future.]   or	that  he  makes	 a  nomic  statement
    (answering to our nomic present).  The aspects denote  different
    degrees  of	 duration  and different kinds of tendencies "during
    duration."	As yet we have noted nothing to	indicate whether  an
    event  is  sooner  or later	than another when both are being RE-
    PORTED.  But the need for this does	not arise until	we have	 two
    verbs, i.e.	two clauses.  In that case the "modes" denoted rela-
    tions between the clauses, including the  relations	 of  earlier
    and	 later and simultaneity.  Then there are many detached words
    that express similar relations, supplementing the modes and	 as-
    pects.   The duties	of our three-tense system and its tripartite
    linear objective  "time"  are  distributed	among  various	verb
    categories,	 all different from our	tenses;	and there is no	more
    basis for an objectified time in Hopi verbs	than in	 other	Hopi
    patterns;  although	 this  does not	in the least hinder the	verb
    forms and other patters from being closely adjusted	to the	per-
    tinent realities of	actual situations.

    To fit discourse to	manifold actual	 situations,  all  languages
    need  to  express durations, intensities, and tendencies.  It is
    characteristic of SAE and perhaps many other language  types  to
    express them metaphorically.  The metaphors	are those of spacial
    extension, i.e. of size, number  (plurality),  position,  shape,
    and	 motion.   We express duration by 'long, short,	great, much,
    quick, slow' etc.; intensity  by  'large,  great,  much,  heavy,
    light,  high,  low,	 sharp,	 faint,' etc; tendency by 'more, in-
    crease, grew, turn,	get, approach, go, come, rise,	fall,  stop,
    smooth,  even,  rapid,  slow'; and so on through an	almost inex-
    haustible list of metaphors	that we	hardly	recognize  as  such,
    since  theory are virtually	the only linguistic media available.
    the	nonmetaphorical	terms in  this	field,	like  'early,  late,
    soon,  lasting,  intense,  very,  tending,'	 are a mere handful,
    quite inadequate to	the needs.

    It is clear	how this condition "fits in."  It  is  part  of	 our
    whole scheme of OBJECTIFYING -- imaginatively spatializing qual-
    ities and potentials that are quite	nonspacial (so	far  as	 any
    spatially perceptive senses	can tell us).

[1] Whorf, Benjamin Lee; Language, Thought, and	Reality; copyright 1956,
MIT, printed 1974.  pp.	144-145

				  -3-

    The	absence	of such	metaphor in Hopi is striking.[2]

     ... Concepts of "time" and	"matter" are not given	in  substan-
    tially  the	 same  form of experience to all men but depend	upon
    the	nature of the language or languages through the	use of which
    they have been developed.  They do not depend so much on ANY ONE
    SYSTEM (e.g., tense, or nouns) within the grammar  as  upon	 the
    ways  of  analyzing	 and  reporting	experience which have become
    fixed in the language as integrated	"fashions of  speaking"	 and
    which cut across the lexical, morphological, syntactic, and	oth-
    erwise systemically	diverse	 means	coordinating  in  a  certain
    frame of consistency.  Our own "time" differs markedly from	Hopi
    "duration."	It is conceived	as like	a space	of strictly  limited
    dimensions,	 or sometimes as like a	motion upon such a space and
    is employed	as an intellectual tool	accordingly.	Hopi  "dura-
    tion" seems	to be inconceivable in terms of	space or motion, be-
    ing	the mode in which life differs from form, and  consciousness
    *in	 toto*	from the spatial elements of consciousness.  Certain
    ideas born of out own time-concept,	such  as  that	of  absolute
    simultaneity,  would  be either very difficult to express or im-
    possible and devoid	of meaning under the  Hopi  conception,	 and
    would  be replaced by operational concepts.	 Our "matter" is the
    physical subtype of	"substance" or "stuff",	which  is  conceived
    as	the  formless extensional item that must be joined with	form
    before there is real existence.  In	Hopi there seems to be noth-
    ing	 corresponding	to  it;	  there	 are no	formless extensional
    items; existence may or may	not have form, but what	it also	has,
    with  or  without  form,  is intensity and duration, these being
    nonextensional and at bottom the same.[3]

3.  Discussion

     The idea of "time"	is abstract.  As with all abstract things, we
must talk about	time metaphorically.  The idea that the	future is in
front of us and	the past behind	us is a	metaphor that shows something of
how we think of	time.  Some cultures reverse the metaphor and say that
the future is behind them and the past in front.  Why? -  Well,	from
where you are standing,	you can	look out and see the past, because it
has already happened, and you cannot see the future.  Therefore, the
past is	in front of you	and the	past in	back.

     It	is shocking at first to	realize	the notion that	time proceeds in
a line,	one thing after	the other, as if it were moving	through	space,
is a metaphor.	 It has	serious	implications.	The relationship of time

[2]Ibid, p. 146.
[3]Ibid., p. 157-158

				  -4-

and space is an	important part of our physics, each is measured	in terms
of the other. Entropy exists over time.	 Entropy and time are so locked
together that one is a measure of the other.  Energy and entropy are
defined	in terms of each other.	 In short, our entire model of the
physical universe depends on our way of	understanding time.

     One thing that might be possible is to say	that the Hopi were
wrong.	They simply were to primitive  to know anything	about the way
time "really is."   The	premise	that they were "primitive" is hard to
support.  Did they get themselves into non-negotiable positions	with
their enemies (before the Europeans) that threatened to	wipe out all
known Human Beings?  They had a	rich culture, language,	and society.
There is currently know	way to support the assertion that our path to
higher and higher technology is	the best most advanced path the	human
race could have	taken.	 Europeans simply killed most of the Native
Americans so the question is moot.  The	Hopi had a flourishing society
200 years ago.	Since the Hopi are human beings, there is no
justification for saying that they were	more primitive than the
Europeans using	a chronological	argument.

     People look out at	events in the world and	they come up with
different explanations.	 Since time is abstract, they need metaphors.
Our metaphor has been productive for us, but the realization that it is
a metaphor helps us realize that we *believe* that time	proceeds in a
sequential manner, but we could	believe	something else.	 Perhaps another
metaphor will replace our current one, one that	allows more
possibilities.	What is	important is that there	is no way to show that
there *couldn't* be another metaphor that fits our experience but allows
more possibilities.

Don Steiny
Personetics
109 Torrey Pine Terr.
Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060
(408) 425-0382
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