Hopi: Heterochronic Patterns
"After long and careful study and analysis, 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 (i.e. as
a continuous translation in space and time rather than as an exhibition of
dynamic effort in a certain process), 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." Hence, the Hopi language contains no reference to "time," either
explicit or implicit." (Whorf BL (1956) Language, Thought & Reality. MIT
Press: Cambridge p. 57-8)
"Thus, the Hopi language and culture conceals a METAPHYSICS, such as our
so-called naive view of space and time does, or as the relativity theory
does; yet it is a different metaphysics from either." (Whorf BL (1956)
Language, Thought & Reality. MIT Press: Cambridge p. 58)
"The Hopi conceive time and motion in the objective realm in a purely
operational sense---a matter of the complexity and magnitude of operations
connecting events---so that the element of time is not separated
fromwhatever element of space enters into the operations." (Whorf BL (1956)
Language, Thought & Reality. MIT Press: Cambridge p. 63)
"In this field and in various others, English compared to Hopi is like a
bludgeon compared to a rapier." (Whorf BL (1956) Language, Thought &
Reality. MIT Press: Cambridge p. 85)
"Lexemic categories may be either overt or covert. Hopi is an example of a
language in which they are covert. Possibly Maya may be another case, though
we lack clear information on that point. In Hopi there is no distinction in
the simplex (bare-stem) forms between nouns and verbs, and sentences are
possilbe in which there is no distinction in the sentence." (Whorf BL (1956)
Language, Thought & Reality. MIT Press: Cambridge p. 94)
"Can there be languages not only without selective nouns and verbs, but even
without stativations and verbations? Certainly. The power of making
predications or declarative sentences and of taking on such moduli as voice,
aspect, and tense, may be a property of every major word, without the
addition of a preparatory modulus. This seems to be the case in Nitinat and
the other Wakashan languages." (Whorf BL (1956) Language, Thought & Reality.
MIT Press: Cambridge p. 98)
"The Hopi thought-world had no imaginary space. The corollary to this is
that it may not locate thought dealing with real space anywhere but in real
space, nor insulate real space from the effects of thought. A Hopi would
naturally suppose that his thought (or he himself) traffics with the actual
rosebush---or more likely, corn plant---that he is thinking about. The
thought then should leave some trace of itself with the plant in the field.
If it is a good thought, one about health and growth, it is good for the
plant; if a bad thought, the reverse." (Whorf BL (1956) Language, Thought &
Reality. MIT Press: Cambridge p. 150)
"Hopi "preparing' activities again show a result of their linguistic thought
backround in an emphasis on persistence and constant insistent repetition. A
sense of the cumulative value of innumerable small momenta is dulled by an
objectivied, spatialized view of time like ours, enhanced by a way of
thinking close to the subjective awareness of duration, of the ceaseless
"latering" of events. To us, for whom time is a motion on a space, unvarying
repetition seems to scatter its force along a row of units of that space,
and be wasted. To the Hopi, for whom time is not a motion but a "getting
later" of everything that has ever been done, unvarying repetition is not
wasted but accumulated. It is storing up an invisible change that holds over
into later events." (Whorf BL (1956) Language, Thought & Reality. MIT Press:
Cambridge p. 151)
"Hopi races and games seem to emphasize rather the virtues of endurance and
sustained intensity. Hopi dancing is highly symbolic and is performed with
great intensity and earnestness, but has not much movement or swing." (Whorf
BL (1956) Language, Thought & Reality. MIT Press: Cambridge p. 155)
"In the Hopi language, 'lightning, wave, flame, meteor, puff of smoke,
pulsation' are verbs---events of necessarily brief duration cannot be
anything but verbs. 'Cloud' and 'storm' are at about the lower limit of
duration for nouns. Hopi, you see, actually has a classification of events
(or linguistic isolates) by duration type, something strange to our modes of
thought. On the other hand, in Nootka, a language of Vancouver Ilsland, all
words seem to us to be verbs, but really there are no classes 1 and 2; we
have, as it were, a monistic view of nature that gives us only one class of
word for all kinds of events." (Whorf BL (1956) Language, Thought & Reality.
MIT Press: Cambridge p. 215)
"Hopi may be called a timeless language. It recognises psychological time,
which is much like Bergson's "duration," but this "time" is quite unlike the
mathematical time, T, used by our physicists. Among the peculiar properties
of Hopi time are that it varies with each observer, does not permit of
simultaneity, and has zero dimensions; i.e., it cannot be given a number
greater than one. The Hopi do not say, "I stayed five days," but "I left on
the fifth day."" (Whorf BL (1956) Language, Thought & Reality. MIT Press:
Cambridge p. 215)
"And every language is a vast pattern-system, different from others, in
which are culturally ordained the forms and categories by which the
personality not only communicates, but also analyzes nature, notices or
neglects types of relationship and phenomena, channels his reasoning, and
builds the house of his consciousness." (Whorf BL (1956) Language, Thought &
Reality. MIT Press: Cambridge p. 252)
"We are obliged to say 'it flashed' or 'a light flashed,' setting up an
actor IT, or A LIGHT, to perform what we call an action, FLASH. But the
flashing and the light are the same; there is no thing which does something,
and no doing. Hopi says only rehpi. Hopi can have verbs without subjects,
and this gives to that language power as a logical system for understanding
certain aspects of the cosmos. Scientific language, being founded on western
Indo-European and not on Hopi, does as we do, sees sometimes actions and
forces where there may be only states. For do you not conceive it possible
that scientists as well as ladies with cats all unknowingly project the
linguistic patterns of a particular type of language upon the universe, and
SEE them there, rendered visible on the very face of nature? A change in
language can transform our appreciation of the Cosmos." (Whorf BL (1956)
Language, Thought & Reality. MIT Press: Cambridge p. 262-3)
"The commitment to illusion had been sealed in western Indo-European
language, and the road out of illusion for the West lies through a wider
understanding of lanugage than western Indo-European alone can give." (Whorf
BL (1956) Language, Thought & Reality. MIT Press: Cambridge p. 263)
"Very many of the gestures made by English-speaking people at least, and
probably by all SAE speakers, serve to illustrate, by a movement in space,
not a real spatial reference but one of the nonspatial references that our
languages handles by metaphors of imaginary space. That is, we are more apt
to make a grasping gesture when we speak of grasping an elusive idea than
when we speak of grasping a doorknob. The gesture seeks to make a
metaphorical and hence somewhat unclear reference more clear. But, if a
language refers to nonspacials without implying a spatial analogy, the
reference is not made any clearer by gesture. The Hopi gesture very little,
perhaps not at all in the sense we understand as gesture." (Whorf BL (1956)
Language, Thought & Reality. MIT Press: Cambridge p. 155)
"Thirty pairs of dichotically presented CV syllables were administered to
matched samples of Native American Navajo and Anglo subjects. While sex was
not a significant factor, significant differences were evidenced in the
performance of the Native American Navajo and Anglo subjects. As predicted,
the Navajo subjects demonstated a left ear advantage compared to the
traditional right ear effect found in the Anglo subjects. These results are
discussed as they relate to linguistic processing and neuropsychological
theory. ... Cllinical reports of aphasic Japanese subjects have shown them
to have considerable variability in their writing of Kana and Kanji
characters (6-9). The Kana symbols are phonetic representations of
syllables, while the Kanji characters represent the legographic properties
of the characters. Recent studies have investigated the capacity of the two
cerebral hemispheres in normal Japanese subjects to differentiate and
process these two types of written characters {10-12}. The results of these
studies have indicated that the two cerebral hemispheres do differentially
process Kana and Kanji characters. The Kana (phonetic) symbols seem to be
processed in the left cerebral cortex while the Kanji (logograhic)
characters are more reliably reported when projected to the right cerebral
hemisphere. These results seem to be consistent whth the clinical
observations noted in aphasic Japanese patients {6-9} and are intriquing for
several reasons. First, reading these symbols in Japanese appears to require
a more neurologically integrated effort than reading English, as it seems to
involve the processing of symbols in both cerebral hemispheres rather than
in the left cerebral cortex, which seems to be the case with English.
Second, one could speculate that some mechanism must scan the characters
and, based on their stimulus properties, shift attention transcallosally to
the appropriate hemisphere. Finally, these studies suggest that cerebral
function for written Japanese may be less fully lateralized in Japanese
subjects as is traditionally reported in the contempory literature for
English-speaking subjects. If this is indeed the case, there may be other
populations in which language lateralization differs relative to our current
understanding of neuropsychological asymmetries. There is some very limited
evidence that lateralization for language in the Native American Hopi
differs more dramatically than would be expected {13}. Using an analysis of
EEG ratios, these investigators found a significant right cerebral
hemisphere specialization for language processing in Hopi Indian children."
(Scott, S., Hynd, G.W., Hunt, L. & Weed, W. (1979) Cerebral speech
lateralization in the American Navajo. Neuropsychologia 17: 89)
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