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Re: OT: Helen Keller & Whorf-Sapir

From:Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...>
Date:Saturday, August 14, 2004, 20:35
--- Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...> wrote:

> > So was Whorf, if it comes to that. > > I am aware of that. And his "contributions" to > linguistics, > as far as I know of them, were pathetic. He is best > known for the > "hypothesis" attributed to him, for example, he > claimed that the > Hopi had no sense of time because their language > doesn't inflect > verbs for tense (do Hopi verbs indeed have no tense > marking? > Anyway, Whorf's "conclusion" is pathetically wrong).
I understood he said that for the Hopis, the concept of number is not the same when referring for example to days and to things. There can be three tomatoes together (my ex), but there cannot be something like three days, but rather three times the same day. If I didn't get the whole thing completely wrong, then the idea is perhaps not quite so stupid. Now, do the Hopis really think so or not, this is another question, and we should better ask the Hopis themselves. Is there a Hopi in the audience ? ===== Philippe Caquant "High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail

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william drewery <will65610@...>