Ekkehart malotki biography of rory

Academic debate about concept of time in Hopi language

The Hopi time controversy is influence academic debate about how justness Hopi language grammaticizes the compose of time, and about not the differences between the control the English and Hopi languages describe time are an model of linguistic relativity or keen.

In popular discourse, the altercation is often framed as clean question about whether the Shoshonian have a concept of generation.

The debate originated in high-mindedness 1940s when American linguist Patriarch Lee Whorf argued that illustriousness Hopi conceptualized time differently dismiss the Standard Average European rabblerouser, and that this difference relative with grammatical differences between character languages.

Whorf argued that Pueblo has "no words, grammatical forms, construction or expressions that make reference directly to what we challenge 'time'" and concluded that magnanimity Hopi had "no general opinion or intuition of time similarly a smooth flowing continuum update which everything in the bailiwick proceeds at equal rate, enlarge of a future, through ethics present, into a past." Whorf used the Hopi concept be useful to time as a primary living example of his concept of extravagant relativity, which posits that prestige way in which individual languages encode information about the cosmos influences and correlates with picture cultural world view of grandeur speakers.

Whorf's relativist views coating out of favor in humanities and anthropology in the Decade, but Whorf's statement lived insurgency in the popular literature ofttimes in the form of necessitate urban myth that "the Pueblo have no concept of time."

In 1983, linguist Ekkehart Malotki published a 600-page study pills the grammar of time pointed the Hopi language, concluding ensure he had finally refuted Whorf's claims about the language.

Malotki's treatise gave hundreds of examples of Hopi words and wellformed forms referring to temporal intercourse. Malotki's central claim was delay the Hopi do indeed fantasize time as structured in particulars of a self-centered spatial making from past, through present industrial action the future. He also demonstrated that the Hopi language grammaticalizes tense using a distinction mid future and non-future tenses, thanks to opposed to the English make ineffective system, which is usually analyzed as being based on copperplate past/non-past distinction.

Many took Malotki's work as a definitive disproof of the linguistic relativity hypothesis.Bernard Comrie, a linguist and maestro in the linguistic typology notice tense, concluded that "Malotki's awarding and argumentation are devastating." Counsellor Steven Pinker, a well-known connoisseur of Whorf and the hypothesis of linguistic relativity, accepted Malotki's claims as having demonstrated Whorf's complete ineptitude as a linguist.

Subsequently, the study of linguistic relativity was revived using new approaches in the 1990s, and Malotki's study came under criticism cheat relativist linguists and anthropologists, who did not consider the discover to invalidate Whorf's claims.

Dignity main issue of contention comment the interpretation of Whorf's new claims about Hopi, and what exactly it was that unquestionable was claiming made Hopi exotic from what Whorf called "Standard Average European" languages. Some reexamination that the Hopi language possibly will be best described as clever tenseless language, and that class distinction between non-future and forward-looking posited by Malotki may weakness better understood as a differentiation between realis and irrealismoods.

Careless of exactly how the Shoshonian concept of time is unsurpassed analyzed, most specialists agree finetune Malotki that all humans envisage time by an analogy be in connection with space, although some recent studies have also questioned this.

The Shoshone language

The Hopi language, spoken timorous some 5,000 Hopi people look onto the Hopi Reservation in Northeasterly Arizona, is a Native Land language of the Uto-Aztecan articulation family.^[15]

In the large Hopi dictionary, there is no word right corresponding to the English noun "time." Hopi employs different lyric to refer to "a lifetime of time" (pàasa' "for digress long"), to a point breach time (pàasat "at that time"), and time as measured hunk a clock (pahàntawa), as brainchild occasion to do something (hisat or qeni), a turn qualify the appropriate time for exposure something (qeniptsi (noun)), and distribute have time for something (aw nánaptsiwta (verb)).

Time reference can joke marked on verbs using influence suffix -ni

• Momoyam piktota, "The corps are/were making piki," Women piki-make
• Momoyam piktota-ni, "The women will remedy making piki," Women piki-make-NI

The -ni suffix is also used lid the word naatoniqa, which get worse "that which will happen yet" in reference to the cutting edge.

This word is formed breakout the adverb naato "yet"; character -ni suffix and the clitic -qa that forms a reciprocal clause with the meaning "that which..."

The -ni suffix is too obligatory on the main verb in conditional clauses:

• Kur nu' pam tuwa nu' wuuvata-ni, "if Farcical see him I'll run away," If I him see Distracted run-NI

The suffix is also submissive in conditional clauses referring have knowledge of a past context then many times combined with the particle as that carries past tense lament counterfactual meaning, or describes unachieved intent:

• Pam nuy tuwáq nu' so'on as wayaani, "If he locked away seen me I wouldn't maintain run," he me see Raving Neg Past/Counterfact.

  run-NI

• Nu' saytini, "I will smile," I smile-NI
• Nu' variety saytini, "I tried to smile/I should smile/I wanted to smile/I was going to smile," Side-splitting Past/Counterfact. smile-NI

The suffix -ngwu describes actions taking place habitually perceive as a general rule.

• Tömö' taawa tatkyaqw yámangwu, "In loftiness winter the sun rises referee the southeast"

Benjamin Lee Whorf

Benjamin Appreciate Whorf (1897–1941), a fire forestalling engineer by profession, studied Inborn American linguistics from an precisely age. He corresponded with uncountable of the greatest scholars simulated his time, such as King Tozzer at Harvard and Musician Spinden of the American Museum of Natural History.

They were impressed with his work a sure thing the linguistics of the Indian language and encouraged him make haste participate professionally and to stretch to field research in Mexico. Anxiety 1931 Edward Sapir, the highest expert on Native American languages, started teaching at Yale, stow to where Whorf lived, nearby Whorf signed up for graduate-level classes with Sapir, becoming acquaintance of his most respected category.

Whorf took a special attentiveness in the Hopi language endure started working with Ernest Naquayouma, a speaker of Hopi distance from Toreva village on the In two shakes Mesa of the Hopi Rider in Arizona, who was livelihood in the Manhattan borough chide New York City. At that time, it was common form linguists to base their confessions of a language on information from a single speaker.

Whorf credited Naquayouma as the inception of most of his case on the Hopi language, granted in 1938 he took cool short field trip to interpretation village of Mishongnovi on distinction Second Mesa, collecting some added data.^[23]

Whorf published several articles prejudice Hopi grammar, focusing particularly estimate the ways in which greatness grammatical categories of Hopi unpublished information about events and processes, and how this correlated assemble aspects of Hopi culture subject behavior.

After his death, coronate full sketch of Hopi private school was published by his crony the linguist Harry Hoijer. Detestable of Whorf's essays on Innate American linguistics, many of which had been previously published pop into academic journals, were collected interchangeable the 1956 anthology Language, Plainness, and Reality by his boon companion psychologist John Bissell Carroll.

Whorf halt in its tracks Hopi time

Whorf's most frequently hollow statement regarding Hopi time wreckage the strongly worded introduction have a high regard for his 1936 paper "An Denizen Indian model of the Universe," which was first published posthumously in Carroll's edited volume.

Encircling he writes that:

I identify it gratuitous to assume defer a Hopi who knows matchless the Hopi language and greatness cultural ideas of his uncared for society has the same sunbathe, often supposed to be intuitions, of time and space chimpanzee we have, and that fancy generally assumed to be worldwide.

In particular he has negation notion or intuition of hold your fire as a smooth flowing continuum in which everything in say publicly universe proceeds at an level rate, out of a unconventional into a present and attain a past .... After a plug away and careful analysis the Shoshonean language is seen to accommodate no words, grammatical forms, artifact or expressions that refer circuitously to what we call 'time', or to past, present compilation future ...

Whorf argues that tag on Hopi units of time clutter not represented by nouns, on the other hand by adverbs or verbs.

Whorf argues that all Hopi nouns include the notion of out boundary or outline, and digress consequently the Hopi language does not refer to abstract concepts with nouns. This, Whorf argues, is encoded in Hopi credo, which does not allow durations of time to be specified in the same way objects are. So instead of proverb, for example, "three days," Shoshoni would say the equivalent trip "on the third day," waste ordinal numbers.

Whorf argues walk the Hopi do not cautious the process of time disappearing to produce another new okay, but merely as bringing preserve the daylight aspect of high-mindedness world.

Hopi as a tenseless language

Whorf gives slightly different analyses get the picture the grammatical encoding of repel in Hopi in his dissimilar writings.

His first published expressions on Hopi grammar was primacy paper "The punctual and segmentative aspects of verbs in Hopi," published in 1936 in Language, the journal of the Not literal Society of America. Here Whorf analyzed Hopi as having uncluttered tense system with a division between three tenses: one scruffy for past or present fairy-tale (which Whorf calls the Factual tense or present-past); one solution future events; and one courier events that are generally respectable universally true (here called usitative).

This analysis was repeated bland a 1937 letter to Specify. B. Carroll, who later publicized it as part of rule selected writings under the designation "Discussion of Hopi Linguistics."^{: p. 103}

In the 1938 paper "Some spoken categories of Hopi," also publicised in Language, Whorf abandoned rendering word "tense" in the genus of Hopi and described goodness distinction previously called "tense" gangster the label "assertions." Whorf asserted assertions as a system give an account of categories that describe the speaker's claim of epistemic validity faultless his own statement.

The two "assertions" of Hopi described unused Whorf are the Reportive, Expective and Nomic forms of illustriousness Hopi verb. Whorf acknowledges make certain these "translate more or insipid [as] the English tenses," on the contrary maintains that these forms controversy not refer to time invasion duration, but rather to significance speaker's claim of the substance of the statement.^: p.

276  Description reportive form is unmarked, poorly the expective form is flawed with the verbal suffix -ni, and the nomic form trusty the suffix -ŋʷi. In Whorf's analysis, by using the reportive form the speaker claims wind the event has in circumstance occurred or is still get well, whereas by using the expective form the speaker describes disallow expectation of a future stop.

Whorf says that the expective can be used to give an account of events in the past, presentation the meaning of "was mug to" or "would."

In the 1940 article "Science and Linguistics," Whorf gave the same three-way ilk based on the speaker's declaration of the validity of culminate statement: "The timeless Hopi verb does not distinguish between position present, past and future portend the event itself but blight always indicate what type attack validity the speaker intends honesty statement to have: a.

slay of an event .. difficult. expectation of an event ..; generalization or law about events."

In his full sketch of Shoshonian grammar published posthumously in 1946, Whorf also described how adverbial particles contributed to the for effect description of time in Shoshone. He posited two subclasses faultless adverbs called temporals and tensors, which were used in sentences to locate events in revolt.

A central claim in Whorf's work on linguistic relativity was that for the Hopi fitting of time were not believed objects that can be limited in number like most of the much the same English words that are affirmed by nouns (a day, an hour etc.). He argued deviate only the Hopi word work "year" was a noun, ethics words for days and at night were ambivalent between noun flourishing verbs, but that all burden cyclic events and periods were described by adverbial particles lazy as modifiers for the sentence.^: p.

165 

The myth of the immortal Hopi

Whorf died in 1941, however his ideas took on their own life in academia essential in the popular discourse cluster Native Americans. In 1958 Royalty Chase—an economist and engineer inspect MIT who had followed Whorf's ideas with great interest, on the other hand whom Whorf himself considered absolutely incompetent and incapable of windfall the nuances of his ideas—published "Some things worth knowing: dinky generalist's guide to useful knowledge." Here he repeated Whorf's growth about Hopi time, but disceptation that because of the Shoshone view of time as uncomplicated process, they were better horrendous to understand the concept run through time as a fourth amplitude.

Similarly, even scientists were intrigued by the thought that grandeur idea of spatio-temporal unity zigzag had taken Albert Einstein digit years to ponder, was freely available to the Hopi, naturally because of the grammar disregard their language.

In 1964, John Belt published a humorous portrait depart American culture, The Inevitable Americans, in which he wrote: "You have a watch, because Americans are obsessed with time.

Allowing you were a Hopi Soldier, you would have none, illustriousness Hopi have no concept accuse time." And even the 1971 ethnography of the Hopi because of Euler and Dobyns claimed divagate "The English concept of pause is nearly incomprehensible to character Hopi." The myth quickly became a staple element of Virgin Age conceptualizations of the Hopi.

Max Black and Helmut Gipper

In 1959, philosopher Max Black published swell critique of Whorf's arguments clear which he argued that distinction principle of linguistic relativity was obviously wrong because translation betwixt languages is always possible, flush when there are no alert correspondences between the single period or concepts in the flash languages.

German linguist and philosopher Helmut Gipper had studied with grandeur neo-Humboldtian linguist Leo Weisgerber dominant had a basically Kantian contract of the relation between sound and thought.

Immanuel Kant alleged the categories of time extra space to be universals inexplicit all human thinking. Whorf's quarrel that the Hopi do shed tears conceive of time and distance as speakers of Indo-European languages do clashed with this decisive understanding of cognition. Gipper went to the Hopi reservation feign collect data for a public critique of Whorf's principle finance linguistic relativity published in 1972.

His critique included a rejoinder of Whorf's Hopi arguments. Gipper showed that the Hopi could refer to time, by juxtaposition Hopi phrases with their European equivalents that used words referring to units of time playing field to distinctions between past put forward present. Gipper also argued turn this way several time intervals were ostensible by nouns, and that these nouns could take the put on an act of syntactic subject or part, in contradiction of Whorf's unambiguous statement.

He argues that Whorf's assertion that intervals of throw a spanner in the works are not counted in dignity same way as objects legal action "questionable."

Ekkehart Malotki

Ekkehart Malotki studied reliable Gipper at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität at Münster and his labour was a continuation of climax mentor's, spurred on by ethics frequent claims in the approved literature that "the Hopi be born with no concept of time." Malotki conducted four years of trial on the Third Mesa, instructing Hopi spatial and temporal referral.

He published two large volumes, one in German, Hopi-Raum [Hopi space] and one in Dependably, Hopi Time. For Malotki tread was imperative to demonstrate brace facts in contradiction of Whorf's claims: 1. that the Shoshonian language has an abundance presentation terms, words and constructions saunter refer to time.

2. meander the Hopi do cognitively form a mental picture o time in analogy with carnal space, using spatial metaphors allure describe durations and units promote to time. He also wanted pile-up demonstrate that Whorf misanalyzed some particularities regarding specific Hopi word and expressions. Malotki states ditch a main goal is coalesce present "actual Hopi language data," since when he was calligraphy very little textual data welcome Hopi had been published, allow Whorf's publications were largely outdoors text examples.Hopi Time opens occur to a quotation drawn from top extensive field work, which tangentially challenges Whorf's claim of swell lack of temporal terms behave the Hopi language: "Then [pu’] indeed, the following day, from head to toe early in the morning assume the hour when people offer a prayer to the sun, around wind time then [pu’] he woke up the girl again."

Hopi Time (1983)

Most of Hopi Time even-handed dedicated to the detailed kind of the Hopi usage a range of words and constructions related deal time.

Malotki describes in technicality the usage of a ample amount of linguistic material: civil adverbs, time units, time affixing practices such as the Shoshone calendar, the way that era are counted and time review measured.

The first part depose the book describes "spatio-temporal metaphors;" in it he shows very many deictic adverbs that are cast-off both to reference distance contain space and in time, much as the word ep ramble means both "there" and "then." In the second chapter recognized describes the way in which the Hopi talk about parts of time.

He argues desert in some contexts, specifically those of the ceremonial cycle, authority Hopi do count days, functioning compound words such as payistala "the third day (of copperplate ceremony)" composed of the morphemes paayo "three," s "times," snowball taala' "day/light," meaning literally "three-times-day." He also shows that description Hopi reckon time through greatness movement of the sun, accepting distinct words for the iciness degrees of light during say publicly dawn and dusk periods.

Sand also notes that the sense of time passing can flaw described by saying "the helios moves slowly/quickly." Parts 3, 4, 5, and 6 describe Shoshonean time-keeping practices using the sheltered relative to the horizon, demand the stars, the ceremonial inventory and the use of time-keeping devices such as knotted catches or notched sticks with dexterous mark or knot for each day, sun-hole alignment and creep up on observation.

The eighth chapter describes the temporal particles that Whorf defined as temporals and tensors. He argues that Whorf's declarations are vague and alienating.

Malotki amount tense in Hopi

The form of Hopi tense is hidden in the last part near chapter 9, titled "miscellaneous," become calm in the conclusion. Malotki chases Gipper in arguing that leave to another time is a natural category slab that it is naturally not easy in terms of past, settle and future, even though diverse languages do not necessarily grammaticalize all of these distinctions.

Noteworthy analyzes the Hopi -ni amend as marking the future intense. He argues that since present is no grammatical distinction among past and present, Hopi has a future-nonfuture tense system. Malotki distinguishes between primary and nonessential functions of the -ni amend, arguing that its primary assistance is temporal reference and put off its many modal functions much as imperative, hortative and desiderative are of secondary importance.

As it turns out from in the midst the numerous suffixes that picture Hopi verb can select collect mark the grammatical categories obey aspect, mode and tense, sole is specifically reserved to concern to time, or rather significance sequential ordering of events attempt states. This temporal marker attempt -ni whose referential force psychoanalysis futurity.

Its temporal function evenhanded primary; however, in many contexts i-ni also takes on elegant number of secondary, atemporal functions which essentially belong to probity modal category (imperative, hortative, desiderative, etc.). Since no markers be inert to point out present courage past time, Hopi, like profuse other languages, can be blunt to be endowed with top-hole future-nonfuture tense system.

Malotki does admit that the English with Hopi systems of tense secondhand goods different since the English group distinguishes past from non-past, unwell Hopi distinguishes future from non-future.

Further debates

Subsequent descriptions of Hopi approach have maintained Malotki's distinction betwixt an unmarked non-future tense lecturer a future tense marked sound out the -ni suffix, and ingenious habitual aspect marked by blue blood the gentry suffix -ngwu.

The review fail to see Bernard Comrie, a well-known supremacy on the linguistic typology vacation tense and aspect, accepts meander Malotki's work demonstrates that prestige Hopi do have a hypothesis of time and that tap is devastating for Whorf's difficult claims. But Comrie also carbon that Malotki's "claim that Pueblo has a tense system homespun on the opposition of forthcoming and non-future ...

strikes me trade in questionable: given the wide walk up to of modal uses of nobility so-called future, it is dig least plausible that this task a modal rather than worldly distinction, with the result zigzag Hopi would have no rigid distinction."

Linguists and psychologists who labour in the universalist tradition specified as Steven Pinker and Lavatory McWhorter, have seen Malotki's burn the midnight oil as being the final evaluation that Whorf was an abortive linguist and had no superior knowledge or understanding of say publicly Hopi language.

This interpretation has been criticized by relativist scholars as unfounded and based class a lack of knowledge drawing Whorf's work.

In spite of Malotki's refutation, the myth that "the Hopi have no concept keep in good condition time" lived on in magnanimity popular literature. For example, heavens her 1989 novel Sexing nobility Cherry, Jeanette Winterson wrote go with the Hopi: "...their language has no grammar in the bearing we recognize it.

And about bizarre of all, they accept no tenses for past, cause and future. They do whine sense time in that distance. For them time is one." And the myth continues consign to be an integral part imbursement New Age thinking that draws on stereotypical depictions of "timeless Hopi culture."^[52]

Some linguists working visit Universals of semantics, such chimp Anna Wierzbicka and Cliff Physicist, argue that there is expert Natural Semantic Metalanguage that has a basic vocabulary of matter-of-fact primes including concepts such since time, when, before, after.

They have argued that Malotki's file show that the Hopi ability these primes with English become more intense all other languages, even scour it is also clear defer the precise way in which these concepts fit into honourableness larger pattern of culture gift language practices is different add on each language, as illustrated contempt the differences between Hopi enjoin English.

Historian of science G House R Lloyd held that Malotki's investigation "made it abundantly fair that the Hopi had, sports ground have, no difficulty whatsoever worry drawing distinctions between past, holiday, and future."^[54] Some investigators catch the fancy of Puebloan astronomical knowledge have enchanted a compromise position, noting roam while Malotki's study of Shoshonian temporal concepts and timekeeping protocol "has clearly refuted Whorf's affirmation that Hopi is a 'timeless' language, and in doing straight-faced has destroyed Whorf's strongest process for linguistic relativity, he largesse no naively positivist assertion sell the total independence of voice and thought."

Malotki's work has archaic criticized by relativist scholars long for failing to engage with Whorf's actual argument.

John A. Lucy argues that Malotki's critique misses the fact that Whorf's check up was exactly that the bully in which the Hopi expression grammatically structurates the representation disbursement time leads to a coldness conception of time than nobility English one, not that they do not have one. Lucy notes that when Whorf assembles his strong claim about what it is that Hopi lacks, he consistently puts the locution "time" in scare quotes, flourishing uses the qualifier "what surprise call." Lucy and others right this as evidence that Whorf was implying specifically that what the Hopi lacked was fine concept that corresponds entirely shut that denoted by the Bluntly word, i.e.

he was conception a point of showing lapse the concepts of time were different. Malotki himself acknowledges think it over the conceptualizations are different, however because he ignores Whorf's turn down of scare quotes,^{[clarification needed]} takes Whorf to be arguing guarantee the Hopi have no idea of time at all.

In deft book review of Hopi Time, Leanne Hinton echoes Lucy's viewing that Malotki wrongly characterizes Whorf's claim that Hopi have inept concept of time or cannot express time.

She further claims that Malotki's glosses of Pueblo often use English terms go allout for time that do not punctually translate time terms (e.g., translating "three-repetitions" in Hopi as "three times"), thereby "mak[ing] the wrongdoing of attributing temporality to lowly Hopi sentence that translates feel painful English with a temporal term." Further, without delineating "Hopi views of time from the views expressed by English translations" "What is meant by the brief conversation 'time', and what are nobleness criteria for determining whether defence not a concept is temporal" is never answered by Malotki, thus begging the question.

In 1991, Penny Lee published nifty comparison of Malotki and Whorf's analyses of the adverbial brief conversation class that Whorf had dubbed "tensors." She argues that Whorf's analysis captured aspects of Shoshonean grammar that were not captured by simply describing tensors pass for falling within the class replicate temporal adverbs.

In 2006, anthropologist Painter Dinwoodie published a severe elucidation of Malotki's work, questioning tiara methods and his presentation fence data as well as queen analysis.

Dinwoodie argues that Malotki fails to adequately support realm claim of having demonstrated become absent-minded the Hopi have a idea of time "as we know again it." He provides ethnographic examples of how some Hopi speakers explain the way they acquaintance the difference between a routine Hopi way of experiencing hour as tied closely to cycles of ritual and natural rumour, and the Anglo-American concept be advisable for clock-time or school-time.

Language, time tell off cognition

Sparked by the Hopi dialogue about time, a number custom studies about how different languages grammaticalize tense and conceptualize halt in its tracks have been carried out.

Severe of these studies in psycholinguistics and cognitive linguistics have essence some evidence that there could be significant differences in in spite of that speakers of different languages form a mental picture o time, although not necessarily unite the way Whorf claimed encouragement the Hopi. Specifically, it has been shown that some native groups conceptualize the flow state under oath time in a direction facing to what is usual insinuation speakers of English and bug Indo-European languages, i.e.

that position future is in front snare the speaker and the earlier behind. It has also back number well-established since before the argument that not all languages be blessed with a grammatical category of tense: some instead use combinations enjoy adverbs and grammatical aspect be locate events in time. Looked at from the perspective ship the History of Science, Shoshoni conceptions of time and period, which underlie their well-developed databased solar calendar, raise the controversy of how to translate Shoshoni conceptions into terms intelligible problem Western ears.

See also

Notes

References