Re: Wofir aka The Whorf-Sapir Hypothesis

dirk elzinga wrote:

> On Thu, 7 Sep 2000, Thomas R. Wier wrote:
>
> > 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 coulda sworn that Sapir had done the main work on it, but I just checked
a big book I have on some collected writings of his, and none concentrates
on Hopi in particular (but, as you mention, it does appear in _Language,
Thought and Reality_).  I must have confused the two.  Their areas of
study did overlap considerably.

> 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?
... and here, too, I don't know.  Just doing a quick check on the net, I found
this

<http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/POS/Turchap7.html>

It mentions that phrase in connection with Whorf, and though it does not exclude
Sapir, I think I'll cheerfully retract that entire email to be on the safe side :)

(I was *seriously* tired this afternoon -- I don't know what I was thinking.)

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Tom Wier   |     "Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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