CHOMSKY:
The hypothesis¹ of linguistic relativity as formulated particularly by Whorf², discussed here at length, is one that has given rise to much interesting thought and speculation.

² Whorf never in all of his writings formulated a single hypothesis that I can find; he did however formulate a principle, which is of a different order of scientific nomenclature than a hypothesis--which Whorf knew, but has still 50 years later not become clear to all "scientific" linguists. Again, no citation.

Many of the inadequacies in Whorf's formulation are sketched here; there are others that deserve more prominence than they have received.³

Whorf argues that the structure of language⁴ plays a role in determining a world-view,⁵ and supports his argument by contrasting the⁶ world-view characteristic of speakers of Standard Average European (SAE) with that of speakers of various American Indian languages. As Schaff notes, the hypothesis practically rests on the treatment of the categories of time and space⁷ in Hopi.

⁵ Notice very carefully the wording here: the structure "plays a role in determining a worldview." Here Chomsky is being very generous--is fairly accurate--and not overtly prejudicing the argument to come. However, "determine" is a term unique to Newtonian/Cartesian science, shorthand for "monocausally determines" such that event A uniquely causes event B. Both the so-called "strong" version (which even critics begrudgingly admit Whorf didn't hold, but anyone who speaks favorably of Whorf probably does--although if Whorf didn't hold that view, why bring it up?) and the so-called "weak" version (which most critics claim they hold and figure Whorf maybe did too) nonetheless partake equally of Newtonian monocausal determinism founded on an Aristotelian logic of exclusion. The "weak" version is in fact more deterministic than any view Whorf held--which, informed by the systems thinking of physics, partook of multicausal and interdependent relationships founded on a non-Aristotelian logic of inclusion. This is also behind the critics' distinction about whether language "shapes/molds" thinking or merely "reflects/mirrors" our thinking. Systems thinking however, with its insistence that sometimes the opposite of one profound truth is another profound truth rather than something to be tracked down and killed--that historically language shapes thinking and thinking shapes language. Notice that Chomsky began by talking about linguistic relativity, and then all of a sudden he's talking about determinism, as if the two have some inextricable connection! Since, as I have shown elsewhere, Whorf's version of "linguistic relativity" was an extension of Einstein's relativity principle--and Einstein's relativity principle does not contain determinism. (Good thing his colleagues didn't taunt IBM with "The Einstein Hypothesis!)

⁶ We might quibble on "the" or "a" here.

⁷ Without the careful use of quotation marks, the way Whorf did, I'll be hornswaggled if those words space and time there don't look like universal a priori notions given to all humans in the same way!

The category of space is similar in Hopi to SAE,⁸ but the Hopi, Whorf argues, do not have our intuition of TIME as a smooth flowing continuum, with a past, present, and future, in our sense.⁹ The basis for this distinct world-view is provided by the categories of their language,¹⁰ which does not formally provide the past-present-future analysis of verb forms, as in SAE.¹¹

 ⁹ Or, as Lakoff and Johnson elaborate, the 3 popular metaphors of TIME AS A MOVING POINT, TIME AS A JOURNEY, or TIME AS STATIONARY WHILE WE MOVE THROUGH IT. Now that we're talking about metaphors instead of structure, we're into the culture part of the language/culture system rather than the language (structure) part per se.

 ¹⁰ A skillful reiteration of Chomsky's framing, whereas Whorf's statement (that "the Hopi language is seen to contain no words, grammatical forms, constructions or expressions that refer directly to what we call 'time,' or to past, present, or future, or to enduring or lasting, or to motion as kinematic rather than dynamic.... or that even refer to space in such a way as to exclude that element of extension or existence that we call 'time,' and so by implication leave a residue that could be referred to as 'time.' (p57-8)") is preceded by his own framing: "I find it gratuitous to assume that a Hopi who knows *only the Hopi language and the cultural ideas of his own society* has the same notions, often supposed to be intuitions, of time and space that we have and that are generally assumed to be universal." Chomsky, coming from a mathematical and autonomous syntax position, rather than an anthropological and human-centered stance, must have somehow missed that critical 'language/culture' linkage Whorf insisted on.

 ¹¹ Actually, as I have shown in a recent posting, "Summary: Time and Tenses" on the Linguist-List, neither do most European languages! The future tense per se is unstable within IE languages, and hardly occurs outside them, and the only reason we "feel" that languages should have future tenses is because hundreds of years of examining exotic languages through the lens of Latin Grammar told us so.

Against this it has been argued that Whorf gives no evidence for a difference in linguistic structure, but, rather, begs the question by postulating the difference on the basis of the difference in the formal structure of Hopi and SAE.¹² Here, then, is a point where further research might be proposed, perhaps along lines that Schaff suggests, to bridge the gap in the argument.

But there is, after all, a much more fundamental defect in Whorf's argument, namely, that his description of SAE is incorrect.¹³ In English, for example,¹⁴ there is no structural basis for the past-present-future world view that Whorf attributes, quite correctly, to SAE speakers.¹⁵

¹⁴ But what kind of example is this--a relevant one? In order to buy this example, do I have to also buy the assumption that English is TYPICAL as far as SAE languages are concerned? What if I don't?

¹⁵ Here we go--slow down and watch this one. Now Latin, which almost everyone would agree is more typically SAE than English, does have a structural basis for that worldview, the -b- future tense, which Chomsky agrees is a correct description. English doesn't have such a future tense--but rather than being considered untypically SAE in this particular instance, it invalidates the entire SAE description. Perhaps this rests on some claim by Whorf that I'm not aware of, that English is the prototype of SAE languages.

Rather, a formal analysis of English structure would show a past-present distinction, a set of aspects (perfect and progressive), and a class of models, one of which happens to be used to express future tense (among other devices that serve this purpose). Approaching English from a Whorfian point of view¹⁶ we would conclude that an English speaker has no concept of time as a doubly infinite line, he himself occupying the position of a point moving constantly from past to future, but rather he conceives of time in terms of a basic dichotomy between what is past and what is not yet past, in terms of an aspectual system of a subtle sort, and in terms of a superimposed and independent system of modalities involving possibility, permission, ability, necessity, obligation, future (the latter not being distinguished in any special way). The conclusion is absurd, which simply goes to show that our concept of time is not determined by the linguistic categories,¹⁷ in any detectable way, but is rather quite independent of them. If this is true of speakers of English, why not of speakers of Hopi?

 ¹⁷ This is called "sleight of hand" when a magician does it with physical objects. As noted in footnote 5, Chomsky set this up that Whorf "argued that the structure of language plays a role in determining a worldview, [italic added], and "plays a role in determining" cannot under any torturing of scientific nomenclature mean "uniquely determines," which is the sense in "our concept of time is not determined by the linguistic categories." If I read Chomsky correctly here, he is claiming that linguistic categories play no role whatever in determining our concept of 'time' and our worldview--again, a rather radical claim which fits quite securely in an autonomous syntax perspective. Once we allow Whorf his own framing, with language and culture as an interdependent system, we may ask the question that Chomsky could NOT ask: given that neither language system structurally supports a future tense, then which language/culture system, English or Hopi, is immersed in centuries-old metaphors of time as moving, stationary, river and journey?

From consideration of these matters one is led to several conclusions. First, the investigation of linguistic relativity presupposes an exact analysis of linguistic structure of a sort that is not available for SAE, let alone for American Indian languages.¹⁸ This is no quibble over tenth-order effects. Even an excellent linguist like Whorf was able to misconceive the nature of such a basic part of English structure as the system of verbal auxiliaries. What is more, it might yet turn out that Whorf's quite naive conclusion about English is actually correct. That is, further research might, in fact, show that at a deeper level of analysis than can be realized today, there is a past-present-future system underlying the formal structure outlined in the preceding paragraph.¹⁹ I see no indication that this is true, but it would not be a very great surprise. If it turned out that Whorf is correct, this would further substantiate my feeling that studies of linguistic relativity are entirely premature, since his correct guess would have been based on no evidence of substance and no defensible formal analysis of English structure.²⁰

¹⁹ Many linguists today are indeed wondering who wrote in stone that a tense must be morphological, it is on that basis ('will' is a modal rather than an affix) that Chomsky adjudges Whorf wrong.

²⁰ When you get done with his preface, what survives concerning the possibility that the Hopis do not have our cultural notion of time? And that maybe, just maybe, there is something profound we can learn about the diversity of human thinking? What happens to that felt sense of difference that my American Indian friends have who are bilingual? It just evaporates, becomes a non-issue, because of this highly rhetorical style--which is the major problem I have with most or all rationalist argumentation and why I, with Whorf, prefer systems thinking, which doesn't just blanket-deny things but accepts all as a respected part of the system, as the appropriate tool for.