steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) (08/08/84)
*** 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 ihnp4!pesnta -\ fortune!idsvax -> scc!steiny ucbvax!twg -/