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
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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
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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
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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
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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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