Re: Wofir aka The Whorf-Sapir Hypothesis

On Thu, 7 Sep 2000, Thomas R. Wier wrote:

> Doug Ball wrote:
>
> >  His interest in linguistics apparently came from
> > "problems from interpreting the Bible."  Whorf's data came from comparing
> > Hopi (and perhaps other Pueblo Indian languages) and the "Standard Average
> > European worldview."
>
> Sapir was actually the one who did the work on Hopi, specifically with respect
> to its lack of morphological tense.  He was also the one who came up with the
> phrase "Standard Average European" and applied it specifically to problems
> of our understanding of the world.
No, the work on Hopi was Whorf's. Besides the grammatical sketch in
_Linguistic Structures of Native America_ (H. Hoijer, ed), there are a
handful of articles collected in _Language, Thought, and Reality_
(J.B. Carroll, ed). Sapir did help Whorf find a Hopi consultant and
secured funding for him, but the analytical work was Whorf's.

I'm not sure who exactly coined the term "Standard Average European",
but I've never seen it in Sapir's writings. Do you have particular
references in mind?

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga
dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu