Benji Wald wrote:
I couldn't stop thinking about the issues I started in my first response to Moonhawk, esp about language type and culture as independent entities. There is a recurrent proposal that small-group languages tend to develop or preserve complex synthetic or inflectional properties, an early typological issue, complex (in word structure) as opposed to "isolating" languages. English (among other Western IE) as opposed to the classical IE languages is sometimes cited as evidence, to which Russian is countered, similarly, Chinese as opposed to Tibetan, etc. In any case, the truth of the correlation between type of language and type of culture depends on what kind of typology of language is at issue. This has been touched on in ensuing discussion with regard to nouny vs. verby languages, with negative results, I think. That is, type of culture is not predictable from this particular typology, at least to the extent that non-Western cultures are of all types, regardless of their difference from Western culture, while the focus of initial discussion particularly contrasted Western with non-Western culture (esp various Amerind cultures). Well, OK. But it is a side-issue, because it does not really come to grips with the Whorfian "world-view" issue, which, I suppose, is not easily deducible from material (and ?performed?) culture, but somehow (?only?) from the language that culture uses. That's a difficult problem because of the danger of circularity.

 The conception is that language and culture are hoplessly entangled, culture being the way we pass on languaging, among other processes; that they are complementarily interconnected, much as the Yin and Yang. They can be analytically divorced from each other as long as we remember we did it and not take the analytical split and autonomous results as real.

[Benji]
And, of course, it's not what Moonhawk is suggesting.

[Benji]
He suggests that there are behavioural consequences to worldviews -- and who would deny that? But I continue to wonder if anthropologists who entertain Whorfianism, in particular, associate language and culture too closely, because they learn so much about a culture from the language -- which is not the same thing as learning about the culture from the TYPE of language.

To be sure, one might equally wonder whether non-anthropological linguists take language to be autonomous from culture because of the post-1957 insistence on such in the professional writings as a point of theory. ;-)

In complementarity, once we take both opposing sides as equally true at once, we bypass the useless either/or arguments and get to the task of assigning different percentages of each happening in a given instance. Somehow, I get the feeling that you like this alternative, or at least understand it.

[Benji]
Again the problem is what typology is under consideration. Traditionally, Whorfianism got a boost in mainstream anthropology through the analysis of kinship system TYPES, because those types often indicated differences in what corresponding cultures made of the social relationships among biological relatives (with culture-dependent implications for adoption into a family or larger units, so that the issue may start "objectively" with biology but it doesn't end there). So by abstraction we get the notion that any TYPE of language MIGHT reflect something about the culture. That's where our problem of nouny vs. verby languages begins, and if we can solve it at all we will have to solve it on a case by case basis.

But let's remember: Whorf wasn't trained in anthropology, tho he got at least one field trip with a master anthrolinguist -- he did most of his fieldwork right where he was. And I, for instance, came to his work first in the English department right where you are teaching. At any rate, his writings are mainly linguistic, and I think he's had the most debate in linguistics, with anthropology, pyschology, sociology and cognitive science all vying for second. But I could be wrong. ;-) I don't think most of them understand Whorf correctly since the science social scientists usually assume is 19th-C. physics while Whorf was an uncontested pioneer in bringing 20th-C. insights of relativistic and quantum physics into linguistics and therefore danced to a different drummer as far as determinism is concerned.

[Benji]
So back to the issue at hand. And I add that the issue is becoming more manageable as specific linguistic examples have been introduced and discussed, with interesting results in revealing different concepts of "language", "meaning" and what-not, e.g., that in nature rocks are neither nouns or verbs. As Ken Hale said, we impose those categories on references to them. But then again that's the issue.

And what's really at stake here, I think, is whether it's possible using human language that doesn't collapse the wave-function and create an unambiguous object. That's the consensus my Native friends and various quantum/relativistic physicists have come to.

Let's take "person" and clumsily turn it into "personing," meaning the awareness of an apparent human being. It's not said with absolute certainty because -- who knows?! -- it may be a spirit of some sort in human appearance; or if there's "coyote-ing," it could really be a shape-shifter. So the "root-y" talk allows them to talk about their awareness, and thus how they know, without collapsing the possibilities. I'm trying to relay their positions as I heard them as accurately as possible.

[Benji]
And BTW what do we mean when we say that a root is either a noun or a verb?

[Benji]
As we've noted for English, it doesn't mean much. I suppose we indentify English "rock" (in the appropriate meaning) with a noun because IN PRACTICE it is usually realised as a noun, and then "stone" because we assume that the verb is (?was) derived from the noun, still the more frequent use. And then for "sleep", some can't decide on a prime label and others might suppose VERB where impressions don't suggest a priority of one use over the other -- and maybe because verbs are so "central" and the stereotype of the noun as a "thing" may favour categorisation of a root as a V when it is not a stereotypical "thing".

As for the priority, I'd like to see it as favoring (animate) process and relationship, not collapsing possibilities over [+/- anim] objects, or vice versa. Oops -- did I stack the deck a bit on that one? ;-)

[Benji]
Now, here I'm talking about how linguists not make analytical decisions, not that they necessarily have to do with how speakers "regard" them. Of course, if we find that speakers with brain lesions that affect their recall, comprehension or whatever of nouns but not verbs have difficulty finding certain items then we have independent evidence for an analytical decision we may make, e.g., maybe they can't talk about "man" but only "man the boats", whereas speakers who have the same lesion but a verby language can still talk about "man". But I still suggest that that does not help us draw any conclusions about worldview such as it has been discussed up to now.

[Benji]
It only shows what we are already taking for granted, that languages differ by type -- well, additionally that these have storage consequences in neural networks, but not necessarily at the level of complexity that neural networks control a worldview.

And I'll throw into the mix Deacon's Symbolic Species, arguing that specific languages grow the brain differently; or at least that's my take on what he says, but I'm open to differing interpretations.

[Benji]
Well, the topic is rich. Let me control myself to respond to some specific points made, mainly by Moonhawk, passing over the debate with Larry Trask, where I see a cultural conflict between the two with occasional implications for linguistics as a culture, but which I do not have the stamina to pursue now.

[Benji]
First one point to a statement by Ahmad Lofti which clarifies the direction of the discussion between me and Moonhawk. Ahmad writes:

unfamiliar grammatical means to say what they want to say.

This implies that you can conceptualise and create meaning independently of language: you first think of meaning, then you put it into words depending upon the type of language you speak, and then BANG! You express yourself with nouns and verbs or whatever you find around.

[Benji]
The truth is that the very concepts you form are influenced by how others (including your predecessors) have decided to view the world. For the English, one and the same event is expressed as 'it's raining' while the Persian-speakers see the same event as 'The rain is coming'. Here Persian is even more nouny/thingy than English.

[Benji]
The first point is a really good and crucial point. My only answer is that with respect to my example of optioinality of pluralisation in, say, Chinese, I do not see that that can plausibly argued to affect worldview of one vs. many "things".

Does "dual" (mated pair, usually together), betwwen singular and plural, represented as a verbal affix, add to or change this argument at all? Does the category "dual" shape perception of Nature to any appreciable degree?

[Benji]
Now, the Chinese counter-system is another matter, because it indeed group things in a certain way which varies from one language to another, and may affect our view of the things referred >to. It's no different from (male) English speakers using "she" to refer to boats, cars or various other machines, exhibiting a kind of affection that resonates with the sexual overtones of "she" applied to women, or whatever image of women such a speaker may associate with the application of "she" to machines.

So the question becomes: what if these 80 roots or so kinesthetically categorize reality as consisting of 80 primes of awareness of movement, which can then be combined with each other as the occasion warrants.

[Benji]
So I do not dismiss the influence of language on worldview, inasmuch as, as Ahmad observed about predecessors, such attitudes and language use come from predecessors and have cultural implications that very much channel basic instincts into "worldviews".

[Benji]
My suggestion was more concrete. It was how do we know nouny vs. verby is not like pluralisation as an optional vs. an obligatory grammatical phenomenon, where wordview is not involved, rather than like "she" in reference to machines or possibly a particular variant of a counter system? So Ahmad is right to ask for clarification, and to question whether conceptualisation and creation of meaning is independent of language. I'm still thinking about that,

[Benji]
because, as I said, I don't think it is in some cases, and I'm not sure how it works in other cases, such as nouny vs. verby.

[Benji]
But then second point starting with "the truth is..." is what we in the trade call BALD ASSERTION.

[Benji]
It seems to do the abstraction thing I mentioned earlier, by tacitly assuming that if we can demonstrate or at least plausibly argue for the influence of language on worldview in some cases, then we can assume it for all cases; the typical problem of generalising and using inductive logic.

[Benji]
But that is what we are exploring in this discussion with rerspect to N/V. A does not demonstrate or plausibly argue for N/V. The implications of the difference between "it's raining" and "rain is coming" (literal translation into English changes English interpretation to "it's gonna rain", not intended, I assume) is not clear for a difference in worldview (to choose a more specific term than conceptualisation), only for a different grammatical strategy for saying the same thing -- across languages.

For instance in Sahaptin (Nez Perce/Yakima -- [snip] what gets translated as "Mother Earth" is more like "gently supporting underneath mocassin [foot-covering]", according to speaker Lloyd Pinkham.

[Benji]
Good. Certainly reflecting a point of view, if not worldview in general. In the chicken-egg problem I'm inclined to view such things as the culture using the language to express a particular point of view. The egg comes first, laid by archaeopteryx, and the culture comes first deciding on this expression for the earth (perhaps the surface of the earth in particular, I'm just guessing). We learn more about the culture than the language from the example.

Chicken-and-egg stating itself presupposes monocausal determinism -- one exclusively causing the other and not vice versa -- which has retarded any progress on this issue in decades. I'd rather play the game that takes them as both right, rather than one right and one wrong, called complementarity. It ingests the paradox as true, just needing a reframe for clearer deliberation.

[Benji]
I suppose the grammatical context in Sahaptin determines whether the English translation is adequate to suggest a participial phrase rather than a nominal, i.e., "(the thing that) supports gently under the moccassion', i.e., the thing you walk on and isn't covered with obstacles.

[Benji]
In this context, I recall Bloomfield's mention of a Menominee name 'he sits among six' (or some other number).

[Benji]
I assumed a cultural reference that has meaning for Menominees, like Quintus for the fifth son would have cultural implications for ancient Romans, rather than simply display a lack of imagination in naming practices.

[Benji]
But to get back to the grammatical point, the Menominee name is translated as a sentence, or clause.

[Benji]
That's common in a variety of languages across the world, even >such things as "(s/he) was born during a/THE famine". But, as Moonhawk anticipates in a later passage, the English translation may be misleading from the point of view of English -- or even such names as Quintus, a nominal in Latin. Thus, we lose nothing of the cultural reference if we translate it into English by a nominalisation, e.g., a relative clause, "(the one WHO) sits among six", etc.

[Benji]
The relativisation makes such names less bizarre for the English speaker, but does not really affect the insight they get into "worldview". That is, it's not the grammatical construction that carries this piece of worldview; it's the content.

Or "iyeska" in Lakota, meaning "mixed-blood" if you're talking about someone's ancestry/culture, "translator" if about language, and "shaman" if about the sacred. But they're still talking about the underlying process of going between in each case, focusing on dancing not dancers. Now it's true you could in some sense recover the noun IF you know the context. Often, however, this is not culturally desired except for teaching purposes, then dropped.

[Benji]
Now that gets back to the culture, as usual. "translator" may suggest that the "mixed-blood" is a potential cultural bridge, even mediator, between Lakota and the other culture. It's the classification thing again, precipitated by the culture and THEN expressed in the language.

[Benji]
You can see where my further thinking about the relation of culture to language got me, even before I read M's message. A later comment

And the bitch of it is, even verb is a noun! ;-) Only joking, since that obviously doesn't hold for me and my verbing -- damn! still a noun! ;-)

Of course, but then appreciate that verb originally meant its cognate word. Its specialisation of meaning shows at least one IE group's appreciation of the primacy of the verb over the noun.

[Benji prior:] Similarly, the noun "something" in "something happened" does not show a tendency to REIFY, as opposed to NOMINALISE. Similarly, "WHAT happened?" answer: "it rained" or whatever.

[Benji]
Doesn't really matter. It takes more argument to counter the view that "it" is just a "dummy element" and that when English developed this feature of its current grammar from the previous one which allowed "rained" that reflects a change in the worldview of its speakers. There's a little more to say here because I think "something" is a replacement of a wh- word "what" indicating an indefinite. So even before "dummy it" arose "happened" took a subject. Again the language that allows the verb alone does not require whatever distinction there is between "it" and "something" (or "what" as an indefinite). The message is the same. Worldview is not obvious.

[Moonhawk prior:] I remind everyone of Whorf's Hopi example of "rehpi" -- flashed! No light, lightning, or it involved (making ours look like grammatical fictions), just a bare predicate, the way we saw with "Dancing with Wolves" and "Stands With Fist" (probably better Dances-wolfing and Stands-fisting or some such); what comes after the initial (subjectless) verb looks like prepositions with object NPs in the translations, but can be just kinesthetic roots acting as infixes and suffixes in various Amerind languages.

[Benji]
English allows wolf-dancing (> wolf-dance verb), etc.

[Benji]
"flashed" is not an adequate translation for "light" unless only for "a flash of light".

[Benji]
Whether the apparent past inflection suggests a view of the transitoriness of light or fails to capture the more general meaning of the inflection at issue might be a matter of contention.

[Benji]
I can see here the temptation to rely on a speaker judgment that interpretation UPON REFLECTION indicates a temporary state by association with the use of the inflection with contexts where pastness is understood, but in a gentle way I am >reiterating Trask's point that this may be post-hoc philosophising by a speaker noticing a grammatical difference between Hopi and English, and not an indication of a difference in worldview in normal unreflecting use of the language.

[Benji]
It's a difficult point to resolve. The data are important, but so far insufficient.

[snip flags, pluralizing, my Cheyenne failures :-( ]

[Benji]
This gets back to what I was saying above about "he sits with six" (uh I think it was actually seven), etc. As with any languages, for learning how to speak, time is better spent listening to unreflecting speech, speaking, getting corrected and continuing to speak. That's the only way to learn to speak IDIOMATICALLY, and it's very important. Beside that, the grammatical distance between Cheyenne and English makes it more difficult to get how the grammatical strategies are used idiomatically than for many other languages, even non-Western ones. This is a relevant observation not an accusation since M had a job to do. We see that under the constraints of having a job to do, a savvy linguist can fall into the procrustean trap, and that goes for all linguists. It's something we try constantly to guard against, but with no hope of total success until the job of linguistics is finished -- now and forever.

[Benji]
Much more needs to be said about idiom than I can say -- or even understand. I'll just give the example that English made me want to use a substitute for "before" in saying such things as "he gets up and smokes BEFORE he even washes his face" in Swahili. And there is a Swahili equivalent for "before" that satisfies that urge for the English speaker. But I quickly noticed that Swahili speakers most commonly say "he gets up and and smokes, he hasn't even washed his face (yet)". That's the idiom, and it has larger implications for the difference between how English and Swahili mark clause relations, aspect vs. subordinating conjunctions.

------ Message 2 -------

[Benji]
Prt 2 of my further thoughts to Pt 2 of Moonhawk's messages.

[Moonhawk prior:] All glossaries of scientific disciplines are nearly exclusively populated with nouns -- for a starter. And just because it comes out as "the dancing" when discussing it in English doesn't mean that's the case in the Native languages I'm discussing. I'm trying to focus on animate processing and relationshipping as prime, with all objects being grammatical fictions.

Yes the starter is facilitated by the ease with which English nounifies, and then, as I mentioned in my original response, how scientists avail themselves of that strategy to use a shorthand to refer to phenomena. I won't deny reification, but I'll put it in the eye of the beholder, rather than in a worldview necessitated by the language or the strategy used.

[Benji]
As noted earlier, Hale agreed that objects are grammatical fictions inthe sense of the discussion here. Again, it's the effect of those grammatical fictions on worldview that is at issue, not the objects referred to themselves.

[Benji]
I had said: [Benji prior:] The term "optional" suggests that the NP referents are understood, and simply do not have to be obligatorily expressed, not even by pronouns -- although it is not clear that the prefixes referred to do not function as "pronouns", regardless of Latin.

Moonhawk responds:

[Moonhawk prior:] Not so fast -- that's a misinterpreting of my "optional," which I hope I've cleared up by now. While it may be optional structurally, its use is culturally proscribed to be outside of daily talk -- so it is certainly NOT recoverable in that sense, according to the Natives, who themselves must occasionally interrupt for clarification.

[Benji]
It's not clear whether we're dealing with idiom or grammar here. It seems idiom. Don't mention the objects unless you think you have to; and it might be insulting to mention them if that presupposes that the listener is too stupid to understand without overt mention -- or is it repeated overt mention?

[Benji]
It becomes a matter of judgment, just like what kids have to learn in English who start off a complaint with "I can't find it!" -- can't find what? In English listeners often get confused about pronominal references when there are a lot of he's and she's in the discourse.

[Benji]
Sometimes they don't know they're confused and leave with the wrong impression. Sometimes they ask for clarification, "wait! he, him, is he Jack or Ralph?" In the language at issue in the example I suppose the request for clarification would be simply "who?" or "what?"

[Benji]

[Benji prior:] Against this is Sapir's observation that Takelma speakers tend to present myths as if they directly experienced the events related. It is then a matter of levels of belief and not specifically of experience.

[Moonhawk prior:] In societies living in what Owen Barfield called "original participation," they WERE kinesthetically reliving that teaching ("myth" has conflicting meanings) and thus directly experienced the events related. This is what it means to speak a kinesthetic- rather than visually-based language. Sahaptinn speakers sing an ancestor's song and by so doing kinesthetically relive looking East from atop the Rockies and seeing the Great Inland Lake that disappeared 6-8000 years or so ago. I can understand the mystery.

That refines what I said about evidential being a matter of belief in such cases. I take "myth" in the usual sense as not directly experienced in the sense of "eye-witness", but we're playing with what I meant by direct experience here. It is certainly cultural rather than linguistic that speakers in current Western societies are not so readily believed when they claim to have been visited by Jesus or flying saucers or whatever. But that is not to deny, even in such a culture, that such claimants have had a religious or mystical experience which for them is real. It is Sahaptin culture that facilitates its religious experiences, not least by using and probably even encouraging the "eye-witness" evidential for such experiences. Among the religious in mainstream Western culture, religious experience may be accepted but not expected on a daily basis. The difference may be that the religious mainstream sees God not religious experience as inscrutable.

[snip Homer, poor bard!]

[Benji]
As some linguists including Karl Teeter noted, it is doubtful that there is any language without nouns, if we recognise nouns as an organising strategy for discourse and not as an inherent property of particular lexical roots. But that takes us from arguing about worldview to arguing about how to analyse any and all languages.

[Benji]
When the two considerations meet we can make progress, in my view. As a linguist, I'd like to better understand the issues involved in what linguistics means to capture by the concept "noun" before I start entertaining thoughts about what effect that might have on worldview. All my discussion here has another issue in mind, getting a proper perspective on the difference between language and "culture". We take the difference for granted, but we're having difficulty disentangling their interconnections.

[Benji]
In the best of worlds I would see this discussion splitting into two. One is what's a noun? The other is when is language not culture and culture not language?