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From: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: Dialects (Was Re: Shakespeare's Future)
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Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 18:32:30 GMT
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In article <3313cb06.4531281@nntp.ix.netcom.com>,
Harvey White <madyn@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>On Mon, 24 Feb 1997 02:50:13 -0500, jgwhite@acsu.buffalo.edu wrote:
>
>>jgwhite@acsu.buffalo.edu
>>Department of Anthropology
>>S.U.N.Y. at Buffalo
>>
>>On Sun, 23 Feb 1997, Harvey White wrote:
>>> 
>>> How about the idea that if language is a tool to transmit culture,
>>> then what is not properly expressable in the language is not a part of
>>> the culture?
[snip]
>>A couple of thoughts:

[first thought snipped]

>>Second, I can't think of any examples of a cultural trait/idea/form which
>>is present in a culture, but cannot be expressed in the language of the
>>culture.  Of course there is always the case that individuals may not be
>>in possesion of enough savvy in their own language to properly
>>convey all of the nuances of a particular feature.  (Then we have partial
>>transmition and possible innovation, and a whole new can of worms!)
>>
>Then I think you have a validation of the point.  Good. That'll mean
>that if the words don't exist, the concept doesn't exist, and the
>language can't discuss it.  I'm not thinking about technical
>information (such as electronics in Japanese, lotsa loan words there),
>but a fundamental concept, perhaps like the concepts of time in some
>American Indian languages vs. English.  (cyclic vs. linear).  

	I think you're wrong here.  Just because a concept isn't basic to
the culture and, therefore, there may not be terms for it in general use,
doesn't mean it doesn't exist in that culture or cannot be discussed.  The
Hopi myth you mentioned was debunked some months ago on sci.lang; it was
due to a misreading of Whorf.  Others have shown that Hopi has--and has
had for some time--words referring to time which show that it is viewed as
*both* cyclical and linear in nature. (If you give it a little thought,
you'll see that English does, too.)

	However, in Hopi, terms drawn from the cyclical view outnumber
those representing the linear one, since, until the coming of Europeans,
the cyclical view was apparently the dominant one in Hopi culture.
Nevertheless, I don't think Hopi speakers have had to make any major
adjustments to their temporal vocabularly or tense/aspectual system in
order to live in the Euramerican dominant culture.

	Similarly, English speakers discuss altered states of conscious-
ness frequently despite their lack of recourse to the specialised
vocabulary of Tibetan mysticism.  We cannot refer from the lack of
standardised terminology in general use in this area that English speakers
lack these concepts or are incapable of expressing them in their native
language, only that these concepts are not important to a great number of
English speakers.  (Likely, they are not important to a great number of
Tibetans, either; how many of those specialised terms do they use or even
recognise according to general language surveys?)

[more pruning]

>>The problem with created languages (to take this thread back to the
>>original discussion dealing with sci-fi writing) is that often authors
>>don't view language as a cultural tool, or more basically: culture as a
>>tool for adapting to certain environments.  Instead it's often, "let's
>>make and evil race and a peacful race who use lots of consonants and
>>are basically Europeans with funny foreheads."  Not very intersting.
>
>I'm not guilty of that <g>.  I do have a feline race who couldn't
>speak English (or any other human language) any more than a cat could.
>I found some information on languages, reviewed what I'd done, and
>probably didn't do too badly.  It's an SVO language, but has a few
>different biases built in.  I've only done a few words of it, but so
>far, so good.  (I probably won't get too far in developing the
>language, since it shows up not too frequently).

	My brother and I worked on a Felinoid language not long ago.
Since we needed only a few words for proper names and cultural borrowings,
we didn't bother to create much grammar and took shortcuts in the
vocabulary.  Basically, we modified Mandarin to represent how a cat might
speak it.  I think it actually worked fairly well.

>>Fantasy novels do wonders with human populations in novel situations
>>developing (sometimes) reasonable and interesting cultures.  There's
>>nothing more dissapointing to this reader than reading a novel and finding
>>that the alien threat turns out to be a fascist regime or Cold War Russia
>>in latex.  Bor-ing.

(Sorry, did you say "Bor-ing" or "Borg-ing"?)

>Didn't do that at all.  Interesting points, I think I'll start looking
>into language a bit more.  It's always been somewhat obvious(to me)
>that language reflects culture.  English and Japanese are optimized to
>transmit very different kinds of information.  Ditto (but far more
>subtlely, I think) for dialects.  

It's always been obvious to *anyone* who's done any thinking at all about
it that language reflects culture.  What's *not* obvious is the contention
that language *determines* culture.  This is the essence of the Sapir-
Whorf hypothesis and, although many people accept a weak form of it, 
efforts to prove it have proved unfruitful.  Have a look at the literature 
--many of the early experiments were done on Hopi, in fact.

For maybe the hundredth time on this newsgroup (sci.lang), may I recommend
Pinker's book?

-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
