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
Reply