Whorf's Linguistic Relativism II -- John W Cook

WHORF'S LINGUISTIC RELATIVISM I1

JOHN W. COOK

(EDITOR'S NOTE: f i r s t p a r t appeared i n t h e prev ious i s s u e o f t h i s j o u r n a l . )

The f o l l o w i n g i s t h e second part of a two-part e s s a y . The

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I n the preceding sec t ions w e have considered and dismissed a v a r i e t y of i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s and c r i t i c i sms of Whorf's t hes i s . With the decks thus c leared , we can now t u r n t o an examination of Whorf's a c t u a l views. What makes t h i s d i f f i c u l t is t h a t Whorf himself w a s not e n t i r e l y clear about t he na tu re of h i s t hes i s . For ins tance , he se r ious ly misleads h i s readers by Srequently pro- claiming t h a t t he view of language which he and Sapi r were advocating w a s e s s e n t i a l l y new and revolutionary, a fundamental departure from o the r views of language. H e a l s o misleads us by h i s i n s i s t ence t h a t t h i s revolutionary account of language is founded on empirical s tud ie s of a v a r i e t y of languages. While it i s t r u e t h a t Whorf's view of language conta ins c e r t a i n novel f ea tu re s , i t i s a l s o t r u e t h a t these f ea tu res were graf ted onto seve ra l presupposit ions about language t h a t Whorf shared wi th those l i n g u i s t s and philosophers whose view of language he meant t o oppose--presuppositions which Whorf took so completely f o r granted t h a t he never bothered t o make them a l toge the r e x p l i c i t i n h i s wr i t ings . Moreover, these presupposit ions are e n t i r e l y philcmophical i n charac te r and are no t supported i n any way by empirical s t u d i e s of various languages. perspective only i f w e see i t as a v a r i a t i o n on an o ld phi losophica l theme and not as a fundamentally new discovery a r r ived a t my empirical l i n g u i s t i c research. To put Whorf's t h e s i s i n t h i s perspec t ive , w e must make e x p l i c i t i t s philosophical underpinnings, and t h i s is what I w i l l now t r y to do.

I n sho r t , Whorf's l i n g u i s t i c r e l a t iv i sm w i l l be seen i n the r i g h t

It w i l l be w e l l t o begin by taking no t i ce of Whorf's own account of the view of language t h a t he i s r e j ec t ing . of t he e s s e n t i a l s :

The following passage captures severa l

Talking, o r t he use of language, i s supposed only t o "express" what is e s s e n t i a l l y a l ready formulated non l ingu i s t i ca l ly . i s an independent process, ca l l ed thought o r thinking, mid is supposed t o be l a rge ly i n d i f f e r e n t t o the na ture of p a r t i c u l a r languages. Languages have grammars, which are assumed t o be merely norms of conventional and s o c i a l cor rec tness , bu t t he use of language is supposed t o be guided not so much by them a s by cor rec t , , r a t i o n a l , o r i n t e l l i g e n t THINKING. (207-208, c a p i t a l s i n t h e origftnal.)

Formulation

I t is not d i f f i c u l t t o f ind examples of philosophers who have held some ver- s ion of t h i s view t h a t Whorf is re j ec t ing . Locke's Essay provides an i l l u s t r a t i o n :

The following passage from John

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Man, though he has great variety of thoughts, and such from which others as well as himself might receive profit and delight; yet they are all within his own breast, invisible and hidden from others, nor can of themselves be made to appear. The comfort and advantage of society not being to be had without communication of thoughts, it was necessary that man should find out some external sensible signs, whereof those invisible ideas, which his thoughts are made up of, might be made known to others. For this purpose nothing was so fit, efther for plenty or quickness, as those articulate sounds, which with so much ease and variety he found himself able to make. Thus we may conceive how words . . . came to be made use of by men as signs of their ideas. . . . The use, then, of words is to be sensible marks of ideas; and the ideas they stand for are their proper and immediate signification. 29

Here we find Locke saying that thoughts, made up of ideas, come first and that language, or words, come later on for giving expression to these thoughts. In another passage Locke makes even more explicit this view of the priority of thought over language:

When children have, by repeated sensation, got ideas fixed in their memorfes, they begin by degrees to learn the use of signs. And when they have got the skill to apply the organs of speech to the framing of articulate sounds, they begin to make use of words to signify their ideas to others. These verbal signs they sometimes borrow from others, and sometimes make themselves, as one may ob- serve among the new and unusual names children often give to things in the first use of language.30

We can also see from this passage that according to Locke ideas, which he also speaks of as the meanings of words,3I are acquired from sensation, so that in the last analysis fdeds (or at least 'simple' ideas) "are all Lderived] from things themselves." Moreover, these simple ideas are "the ultimate materials for all [the mind's.] compositions."32 In other words, thoughts are composed of ideas, which are derived from "things themselves."

Now this account of language and thinking contains the seeds of the view that Whorf was opposing with his relativistic thesis, but to arrive at that view we must add one additional component. Whorf, being a linguist, was accustomed to thinking of meanings in a way that would not have been of especial concern to Locke, namely, in connection with word classes (parts of speech), such as noun, verb, adjective, and so on. More particularly, he took for granted the classical linguists' semantic definitions of word classes. This is the idea that any word of a language belongs to some word class and as such has a meaning in common with all the other members of that class, e.g., that all nouns stand for things and that this is a part of their meaning. Thus, we find Whorf speaking of "noun-meaning" (145). In a more general statement he remarks that "certafn semantic and grammatical properties are assured in the word by selecting ic from a certain class of fixed membership not coterminous with the whole vocabulary" (93). 33

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By adding t h i s i dea of word-class meanings t o Locke's account, we a r r i v e at the view which Whorf w a s opposing with h i s r e l a t i v i s t i c t hes i s . This comes about as follows. Since f o r Locke meanings are no t only ideas i n the mind but a r e produced the re by sensa t ion , i t follows t h a t on a Lockean view word-class meanings g e t i n t o our minds by way of t he senses. For ins tance , t h e idea which the word "stone" s tands f o r contains noun-meaning, and i f w e Lake a Lockean view of t he o r i g i n of ideas , w e s h a l l have t o say t h a t i t conta ins t h i s noun-meaning because the idea w a s produced i n us by a th ing (not by an event, process, at- t r i b u t e , e t c . ) . r a t h e r than a noun o r verb o r prepos i t ion , because the idea w e have made i t stand f o r w a s produced i n us by a q u a l i t y (not by a th ing , event , r e l a t i o n , e t c . ) . This, a t any rate, i s how Whorf would i n t e r p r e t a Loclcean view of language, and he would thus f ind Locke t o be committed t o the b e l i e f t h a t t he world i s made up of ready-made onto logica l ca tegor ies of qua le t i e s , th ings , and events (corresponding t o our ad jec t ives , nouns, and verbs) , oE d iv i s ions of t i m e i n t o pas t , p resent , and f u t u r e (corresponding t o our t enses ) , of dis- t i n c t i o n s of th ings and s t u f f s (corresponding t o our count noims and mass nouns), of ind iv idua t ions corresponding t o our use of s ingu la r and p l i i ra l forms, and so on--in s h o r t , t h a t the world i s the model from which the c l a s s meanings of our ideas (and from which t h e s t r u c t u r e of our sentences) are derived.

S imi la r ly , we s h a l l have t o say t h a t "red" i s an ad jec t ive ,

Now i t is t h i s philosophical view t h a t Whorf meant t o combat with h i s r e l a t i v i s t i c t hes i s . It i s a view t h a t he a t t r i b u t e s t o "old-school log ic ians" (233) , meaning p r inc ipa l ly A r i s t o t l e (241) but a l s o inc luding , I suppose, more recent philosophers such a s M i l l . (See the passage quoted from M i l l i n Section I of t h i s essay.) Whorf a l s o regards t h i s view as a p r inc ipa l f ea tu re of c l a s s i c a l l i n g u i s t i c s , and h i s concern with i t is l a r g e l y due t o the f a c t t h a t he s a w i t as having unfortunate conse uences f o r t h e study of languages which d i f f e r i n c e r t a i n ways from our own.3z

Whorf's argument aga ins t t h i s view i s q u i t e s i m p l e : i f :he old-school log ic ians were r i g h t , then a l l people everywhere would be provided by experience with the same ideas , i .e. , t he same c l a s s meanings would be inscr ibed alike on t h e tabula rasa of every speaker, and hence a l l languages would have t h e same grammatical ca tegor ies . But empir ica l l i n g u i s t i c research has discovered t h a t t h i s i s not so: languages d i f f e r g rea t ly i n t h e i r grammatical ca tegor ies . Therefore the old-school log ic ians w e r e wrong; grammar i s not modeled on ready-made onto logica l ca tegor ies t h a t are given i n experience. 35

This i s not ye t an argument f o r l i n g u i s t i c r e l a t iv i sm, f o r t he argument as thus f a r s t a t e d concludes only t h a t t he old-school view i s mistaken; i t does not t e l l us where t h a t view went wrong o r what i t should be replaced with. Whorf, a s we know, thought t h a t t h e old-school view must be replaced with l f n g u i s t i c re la t iv i sm. Evidently, he s a w t h i s a s the only wa:y t o accommodate the discovery t h a t languages can d i f f e r g rea t ly i n grammatical s t ruc tu re . t h i s i s not t h e only a l t e r n a t i v e here, and what needs t o be explained i s why Whorf thought t h a t i t w a s . But consider, f irst , the o the r ava i l ab le a l te rna- t i v e s .

Y e t

The problem €or t he old-school view, as Whorf represents i t , is a s follows. By holding both t h a t ( f ) meanings ( ideas) are derived, by way of the senses, from the world and t h a t ( i i ) among those meanings a r e word-class meanings, the old-school view i m p l i e s t h a t ( i i i ) a l l languages w i l l have the same word-class meanings--or i n o ther words, t h a t the word-elms impl ica t ions

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JOHN W. COOK

(such as t h a t a s tone i s a thing) w i l l be t h e same f o r a l l languages. empir ica l s t u d i e s , claims Whorf, have shown t h a t ( i i i ) i s not t rue . Such studies have found, f o r example, t h a t "Hopi, with i t s preference f o r verbs, as con- t r a s t e d t o our l i k i n g f o r nouns, perpe tua l ly tu rns our propos i t ions about th ings i n t o propos i t ions about events" (63).--Now one could not very w e l l escape the dilinnna by denying t h a t Hopi, i n many ins tances , uses a verb where English uses a noun. That, I take i t , i s an e s t ab l i shed f a c t . But one might consider r e j e c t i n g t h e not ion of word-class meanings, i - e . , r e j e c t i n g p remise ( i i ) . For one could then avoid saying t h a t Hopi " turns our propos i t ions about th ings i n t o propos i t ions about events."

But

Rejecting the not ion of word-class meanings, then, would be one a l t e r n a t i v e f o r escaping t h e dilemma. And one might proceed along those l i n e s by poin t ing ou t t h a t even wi th in English we sometimes use d i f f e r e n t p a r t s of speech i n t e r - changeably. a verb form, o r "I had a good s leep ," using a noun form. Again, i t seems t o be a matter of i nd i f f e rence t o us whether we say "He remained healthy" o r "He remained i n good hea l th ," using an ad jec t ive i n t h e one case and a noun i n the o ther . And y e t (so one might argue) the d i f f e rence i n word c l a s s does not give t h e sentences i n these p a i r s d i f f e r e n t meanings. And i f t h i s holds f o r p a i r s of sentences wi th in English, i t must hold a s w e l l f o r a pa i r of sentences of which one i s a Hopi sentence using a verb form and the o ther a comparable English sentence using a noun form. clude) word c l a s s e s do not have (semantic) meanings which con t r ibu te t o the meaning of a sentence.

For example, we say i n d i f f e r e n t l y e i t h e r "I s l e p t w e l l , " using

Therefore (one would then con-

This would be one way t o repudia te the old-school view and accommodate the d i f f e rences among languages. Another, more r a d i c a l , way of doing s o would be t o scrap the e n t i r e Lockean p i c t u r e of language. For i f w e j e t t i s o n the not ion t h a t speaking cons i s t s of making sentences mir ror t he world by means of meanings (or ideas) then the re i s nothing d isconcer t ing o r trouble- some i n t h e discovery t h a t languages d i f f e r g r e a t l y i n grammatical s t r u c t u r e . For t h e problem of reconci l ing d i f f e r e n t grammars with ' t h e world' i s a problem t h a t arises only if w e begin wi th t h e idea t h a t sentences, by means of meanings, must somehow mesh wi th ' t he world, ' So i f w e could see our way c l e a r t o abandon t h i s whole idea , t he problem would disappear.

Now n e i t h e r of these a l t e r n a t i v e s s e e m s t o have occurred t o Whorf. He re ta ined both the not ion of ward-class meanings (as given i n semantic def in i - t i ons ) and the broader Lackean not ion t h a t speaking r equ i r e s meanings ( ideas) i n the mind. t he old-school view d id not present themselves t o Whorf's thinking a s even poss ib l e candidates f o r r e j e c t i o n . Consequently he saw only one poss ib l e way of accommodating t h e f a c t t h a t languages d i f f e r grammatically, namely, t h a t of r e j e c t i n g the not ion t h a t fdeas (o r , a t any rate, word-class meanings) a r e derived from th ings themselves. I n o the r words, he re ta ined the Lockean notion of ideas and simply of fe red a new account of t h e i r o r ig in : they a r e not derived from th ings themselves but a r e cont r ibu ted t o one's thinking by the language one speaks. This , then, i s the r e a l meaning of Whorf's l i n g u i s t i c r e l a t iv i sm, as the following passage makes c l e a r :

For reasons we w i l l p r e sen t ly consider, t hese two elements of

When l i n g u i s t s became ab le to examine c r i t i c a l l y and s c i e n t i f i c a l l y a l a rge number c f languages of widely d i f f e r e n t p a t t e r n s , . . - a whole new order of s fgni f fcances [ i . e . , t he word-class meanings of

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languages very different from our own] came into their ken. was found that the background linguistic system (in other words, the grammar) of each language is not merely a reproducing instru- ment for voicing ideas but rather is itself the shaper of ideas, the program and guide for the individual's mental activity, for his analysis of impressions. . Formulation of ideas is not an independent process, but is part of a particular grammar, and differs, from slightly to greatly, between different grammars. We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions whfch has to be organized by our minds--and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. (212-213)

It

Whorf's linguistic relativism, then, is his account of how word-class meanings come into being in the mind.

A striking feature of this passage is that Whorf represents matters as though empirical discoveries by linguists had provided conclusive proof of linguistic relativism, f.e., proof that language is "the shaper of ideas." And yet it should now be clear that Whorf could have thought this only by taking entirely for granted the other elements of the old-school view, namely, the notion of word-class meanings and the Lockean notion of ideas. What he takes to be a conclusion drawn from purely scientific comparisons of various languages is, in truth, a conclusion he arrives at as the result of viewing these comparisons through the spectacles of those two philosophical presuppositions. What we must try to understand, then, is why, in Whorf's thinking, these two presuppositions had the status of unquestionable or self-evident truths a

Consider ffrsr. the notion that there are ward-class meanings which are exhibited by semantic definitions. To understand Whorf's attachment to this notion, we must understand how tw5 seemingly unrelated matters came together in his thinking: metaphysics and his solution to a problem about how linguists should describe the grammar of exotic languages.

As for metaphysics, this was slipped in unobtrusfvely by Whorf in the passages last quoted from him. When he uses there the phrases "dissect nature" and "the categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena," he is not thinking of fish and fowl or flora and fauna; he is thinking, rather, of the metaphysical categories: thfng, event, relation, substance, quality, action, past, present, future, and so on. These are the categories into which languages "dissect nature," and Whorf's relativism is the claim that languages dfffer in the way in which they deploy such categories. He makes this explicit when he writes that the terms "'things, objects, actions, substances, entities, events' . . . are but the creatures of modern Indo- European languages and their subsidiary jargons, and reflect the typical modes of segmemting experience in these tongues" (162). Whorf is saying, in other words, that each language, by virtue of fts grammatical structure, lays down a kind of metaphysical template across the "kaleidoscopic flux of impressions," so that whenever we speak to one another of the weather or the prospects for world peace or the hole in the roof that needs patching, we are speaking not only with the concerns of the gardener or the citizen or the householder, but

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are speaking also, and of necessity, with the thoughts of metaphysicians. Thus, in referring to a contrast like that which Sapir draws (see Section 11) between English and Nootka, Whorf tells us that "English and similar tongues lead us to think of the unfverse as a collection of rather distinct objects and events corresponding to words" (249, whereas speakers of a polysynthetic language such as Nootka are led to think of the universe in some quite different way.--It is metaphysical thoughts such as these, linguistically entwined with our thoughts about the weather and diplomacy and the hole in the roof, to which Whorf's relativism pertains.

These metaphysical themes in Whorf's thinking come clearly to the fore in a passage such as this:

The Indo-European languages and many others give great prominence to a type of sentence having two parts, each part built around a class of word--substantives and verbs--which those languages treat differently in grammar. . . . This distinction is not drawn from nature; it is just a result of the fact that every tongue must have some kind of structure, and those tongues have made a go of exploiting this kind. The Greeks, especially Arfstotle, built up this contrast and made it a law of reason. Since then, the contrast has been stated in logic in many different ways: subject and predicate, actor and action, things and relations betwean things, objects and their attributes, qualities and operations. And pursuant again to grammar, the notion became ingrained that one of these classes of entities can exist in its own right but that the verb class cannot exist without an entity of the other class, the "thing" class, as a peg to hang on. this fdeology, is seldom strongly questioned. (241)

"Embodiment is necessary,'' the watchword of

Whorf goes on to say that Amerfcan Indian Languages "do not paint the separate-object picture of the universe to the same degree as English" and so "pofnt toward possfble new types of logic and possfble new cosmdcal pictures" ( 2 4 1 ) .

Here we can begfn %a identify an important element in Whorf's thinking. He takeit fQP granted that Arfstotle and other philosophers have correctly discerned and made explicft the metaphysics contained in our Indo-European languages. (If they have gone wrong, it is only when they assume that this is the only possible, and hence the correct, metaphysics.) Whorf comes to compare, say, English and Hopi or English and Apache, he already has a definite idea about the metaphysics implicit in our English sentences, and so he looks at the sentences of Hopi or Apache to see whether they contain the same or a different metaphysics. In other words, he sees it as his task to do for Amerfcan Indian languages what Arfstotle and other philosophers have already done for Greek and English. It never occurred to him to suspect that Arfstotle and others may have gone wrong in seefng an fmplicft metaphysics in the grammar of Indo-European languages.

Accordingly, when

All of thfs is quite apparent in his claim that Hopi and English contain different metaphysfcal accounts of the essence of time. "after long and careful study and analysfs, the Hopi language is seen to contain no wcrds, grammatical forms, constructions OK expressfons that refer directly to whar we r . ~ l l 'time,' or to past, present, or future. . . ." ( 5 7 ) .

Whorf tells us that

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To understand how Whorf can have "seen" this, we must first recognize that he did not begin his study of Hopi without philosophical assumpt:lons. trary, he began it by taking the following for granted:

On the con-

The metaphysics underlying our own language, thinking, and culture a imposes upon the universe two grand COSMIC FORMS, space and time; static three-dtmensional infinite space, and kinetic one-dimensional uniformly and perpetually flowing time. . . The flowing realm of time is, in turn, the subject of a irhree- fold division: past, present, and future, (59)

Whorf also describes our metaphysics as the view that time is ''a smooth flowing continuum in which everything in the universe proceeds at an equal rate, out of a future, through a present, into a past; or, in which, to reverse the picture, the observer is being carried in a stream of duration continuously away from a past and into a future" (57). Whorf nowhere seeks to convince us of this. He takes it for granted that anyone can see for himself that this is so. That is, he takes it to be quite obvious that if, for example, I am telling someone about my cabinetmaking project and remark, "It has taken me a long time to fit the doors; I started on it yesterday, and I am still working on it. I will finish it tomorrow," then I am describing the situation by using a metaphysical picture: my use of the noun "time" implies that there is something called "time" (something which we also speak of as passing, as when we say, "A long time passed before he spoke"), and when I use the past tense to say when my work began and use the present tense to say that the work is contiiiufng and use the future tense to say when I will finish, I am implying that my work began at a point in this flowing continuum which has now passed me by, that my work continues at a point in it which has arrived but not yet passed me by, and that the work will be completed at a point in Time which is approaching but has not yet arrived.

Although Whorf does not himself spell out this kind of detail the meaning of his phrase "the metaphysics underlying our own language," I have no doubt that had he been pressed to explain himself, this is the explanation he would have given of how our tenses work. His idea, then, is that our tenses work by implying the existence of a flowing continuum called "time" and by assigning states or events to one or another segment of this Icontinuum--the past, the present, or the future. Whenever we say anything in English, then, we necessarily employ this metaphysical picture. Moreover, we do not regard this as merely a convenient fiction, as a mere manner of speaking. No, we really believe that this flowing continuurn, Time, is a part O E the Universe. We believe, for example, that our birth took place in the pas: and that our death will take place in the future. Indeed, we have little (choice but to think in terms of this picture so long as our language provides us with no alternative to the use of tensed verbs. Perhaps philosophers, such as Bergson (216), whose business it is to challenge the presuppositions of our thinking, can break away from this picture, but the majority of people in our linguistic community are pretty well stuck with it

This I take 50 be Whorf's purely philosophical view 3f the matter, a view which is wholly independent of his study of exotic languages. That is, Whcrf, like many phllosophezs, has the idea that one can read off a metaphysics from the grammar of a language and thereby discern something about the thinking of those who speak the language.

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From this we can see that for Whorf the following was never an empirical question: If two people speak languages having very different grammatical structures, do they think differently? Being himself metaphysically inclined, it would have seemed to him undeniable that people speaking such different languages will think in terms of different metaphysical pictures (concepts, ideas). studies. No, for him the only matter to be established empirically here is whether there are languages that differ in this way, languages whose grammars differ sufficiently to call for different metaphysical interpretations. it is this and nothing else that Whorf means to establish when he presents us with examples of Hopi or Apache or Nootka grammar and compares them with English. He assumes that his readers can see for themselves that the English sentence in the comparison bears the metaphysical interpretation he places on it, and he is only asking us to recognize that the sentence of the exotic language cannot be similarly interpretated but lends itself, instead, to a quite different metaphysical (semantic) interpretation.

For Whorf this was not a matter to be settled by empirical linguistic

And

This is why it is a misunderstanding on the part of Whorf's critics to complain that his examples, while providing ample evidence of the grammatical differences among languages, aro, wholly lacking in evidence that these differences are accompanied by any difference in thinking. As I have said before (although I find that I stated the matter somewhat incorrectly in the penulti- mate paragraph of Section III), and as should now be abundantly clear, Whorf's examples were not intended to be taken as evidence for a causal hypothesis. That such different languages require those who speak them to think differently is something we are expected to grant as an a priori matter.

Let us consider here one more of Whorf's examples, one which is meant to show us the difference it makes that the sentences of Nootka and Apache cannot be divided into subject and predicate terms.

He begins with the English sentence "The boat is grounded on the beach," a sentence which, he says, is about a boat and tells of the relation of the boat to the beach (235). Now the Nootka sentence which would translate this, he continues, does not divide into separate words. Moreover, it does not contain "any unit of meaning akin to our word 'boat' or even 'canoe'." Instead, the sentence is built on a stem which means "moving pointwise." "It is not," says Whorf, ''a name for what we should call a 'thing,' but is more like a vector in physics," and the whole sentence, then, "means 'it is on the beach pointwise as an event of canoe motion'." Whorf further explains the difference between this and its English counterpart by means of a simile: ". . . the way the constituents are put together in . . . Nootka suggests a chemical compound, whereas their combination in English is more like a mech- anical mixture'' (236).--And what is the moral of this story? It is that "facts are unlike to speakers whose language background provides for unlike formulation of them" (235).

Now had we asked Whorf how he knows that the facts are "unlike" to the

"Surely you can see that the English sentence is about a speakers of English and Nootka, he would have simply referred us back to the English sentence: thing, a boat, and its relation to another thing, the beach, and this is how we think of the situation: to us the fact consists of one thing being related to another thing. Nootka sentence; it does not divide into separate words, and it does not even

But there fs nothing suggestive of this in the

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have a unit of meaning which translates 'boat.' language the units of meaning are fused to a stem which means 'moving pointwise,' and consequently to speakers of Nootka the fact does not consist of one thing being related to another thing but is more like a chemical compound, in which the elements are mutually reactive."

In this poiyriynthetic

Because this is Whorf's manner of reasoning, he finds it entirely appropriate to jump immediately from linguistic comparisons to a conclusion about thinking. The clearest example of this is found in Whorf's futher illustra- tion of the foregoing point, this time comparing how speakers of English and Apache would report the discovery of a fresh water source, a spring:

We might isolate something in nature by saying 'It is a dripping spring.' (including clear, uncolored, and so on).' With a prefix nb- the meaning of downward motion enters: Then to', meaning both 'water' and 'spring' is prefixed. corresponds to our 'dripping spring,' but synthetically 1.t is 'as water, or springs, whiteness moves downward.' How utterl~y unlike our way of thinking! (241)

Apache erects the statement on a verb ga: 'be white

'whiteness moves downward.' The result

It has seemed to many of Whorf's critics that he has here jumped to an un- supported--and unsupportable--conclusion. One of them, reactlag to this example, protests: "But what is the evidence that the Apache thinks differently? The difficulty is that the hypostatized structural concepts are so bound to the defining grammatical constructions that it becomes hard to conceive of any extra-linguistic verification."36 But to protest in this way is to fail altogether to recognize that Whorf is counting on his readers to read both the English and the Apache sentence metaphysical.ty (semantically), and it was never the burden of the example to show that we are justified in so reading them.

I set out, a few pages earlier, to explain Whorf's attachment to the notion of word-class meanings. We now have the explanation we were looking for. Because Whorf was himself a metaphysician at heart, he found it quite natural to "read off" a metaphysical picture from the grammar of his own language, and that seemed to show him how those grammatical features work, what they mean. It then seemed a simple matter to apply this same procedure to other languages. But to understand why Whorf did apply th;ts procedure to other languages, and why he thought it important to do so, we must turn to his views about linguistics.

VI

When Sapir and Whorf came to the study of American'Indian languages, they were confronted with the fact that these languages differ to such a degree from Indo-European languages that it is often extremely difficult to get the hang of how sentences in these languages are built up: The problem is not at all like that which a native speaker of English has in learning, for example, the word order of German, for in many of the languages which Sapir and Whorf investigated lexical items do not divide up neatly into exact counterparts of English parts of speech, nor are there exact counterparts of out voices, moods, and tenses. The problem for the Linguist, then, is one of trying to illustrate or explain the structure of sentences in the exotic language. And as Whorf was constantly insisting

10

JOHN W. COOK

(87, 9 5 , 9 9 , 112, 160-161, 2 4 2 ) , it can produce misleading results if one tries describe such languages by means of our familiar grammatical terms, such as "noun," "verb," and "subjunctive." these familiar terms, how is he to proceed?

But if the linguist must forego the use of

WhOrf inherited from Sapir and other linguists the use--and the abuse, as I shall argue--of a certain heuristic technique for describing the grammar of these languages. This is the technique we saw Sapir using when he rendered a Nootka sentence into distorted English as "It stones down" and which Whorf is using when he tells us that the Apache say "AS water, whiteness moves downward." be quite harmless. use in enabling someone to see how certain sentences are built up in another language. 122-123). misleading way. Sapir, for instance, says that when a sentence from another language has been thus rendered into distorted English, it has been "con- ceptually translated."37 By this he seems to mean that we can get at the mean ing of the original sentence by means of the piece of distorted English. Now there is something highly peculiar in this notion of ''conceptual translation." For of course "It stones down" is not a translation of the Nootka sentence; the translation would be the straightforward English sentence "The stone falls." said, we would want to be told, "He said, 'The stone falls'," and not, "He said, 'It stones down'." The latter, unless thought of as a heuristic device f o r a very special purpose, is really a piece of nonsense. For it is neither English nor Nootka--nor, of course, is it some other language. Why, then, does Sapir call it a t r a n s l a t i o n , and why a c o n c e p t u a l translation? It is because he intends that we should read through "It stones down" a s t h o u g h we were reading in some language, i n order t h a t the ' m e a n i n g s ' of the grammat i ca l c a t e g o r i e s of Nootka s h a l l be registered i n o u r m i n d s as they are in the minds of the speakers of Nootka when they use the (actual) Nootka ~entence.3~ he thinks that is reveals Nootka 'concepts'or 'meanings.' Similarly, when Whorf renders the Apache sentence into distorted English and then exclaims, "How utterly unlike our way of thinking!" this exclamation is the result of Whorf's 'reading' the distorted English as though he were reading a (genuine) translation. English as being an "English translation or paraphrase of the ,exotic, sentence" ( 2 4 2 ) - He has the idea that when an Apache uses the Apache sentence in question, he (or his senEence) is saying t h a t as water whiteness moves downward. In other words, it is as though Whorf thought that we can not only cast the Apache sentence into distorted English but can, in turn, cast the distorted English into o r a t i o o b l i q u a in order to get at the meaning of the Apache sentence. And of course when we do this we do find something "utterly unlike" what speakers of English say. But what is "unlike" is not a uniquely Apachean way of thinking (whatever that means) but rather a Whorfian way of making nonsense! If we are to put the Apache sentence into an o r a t l o o b l i q u a form that can be read with understanding, then ic: must go into Straightforward English.

Now regarded as merely a heuristic technique, this would no doubt These distortions of English grammar might be of real

And occasionally Whorf used the technique in just this way ( 9 8 - 9 9 , But he and Sapir regarded this technique in a most peculiar and

If we wanted to know what someone speaking Nootka has

This is why Sapir calls it a "conceptual translation":

(He actually speaks of such a piece of distorJed

So what might be regarded as simply a useful technique in linguistics encouraged Whorf, through his misuse of it, in his belief that he could read off a metaphysics from the grammar of an exotic language. This 'reading off'

11


consisted i n h i s ' reading' these p ieces of d i s t o r t e d English as though he were reading a t r ans l a t ion . it conjures up metaphysical p i c tu re s . And so it w a s n a t u r a l f o r Whorf t o th ink t h a t t h i s e f f e c t on himself provided a d i r e c t i n s i g h t i n t o t h e thinking of those who speak the exo t i c language: they, too, have t h i s metaphysical p i c tu re .

Now doing t h i s undoubtedly has an e f f e c t on one:

We now have some fu r the r understanding of t h e source of Whorf's r e l a t iv i sm, but t he re a r e deeper l aye r s t o be penetrated. This w i l l be evident i f w e can- s i d e r how Whorf might have reac ted t o t h e foregoing c r i t i c i sn i s of h i s "conceptual t r ans l a t ions . " I am inc l ined t o th ink t h a t he wciuld not have been g rea t ly impressed and would perhaps have responded i n the fol.lowing way: "You have accura te ly described my procedure and made e x p l i c i t my t.hinking about these conceptual t r a n s l a t i o n s , bu t I f a i l t o see t h a t you have given any reason f o r thinking I w a s confused. For while you would be q u i t e r i g h t t o i n s i s t t h a t i f we want t o know only t h e pragmatic o r s o c i a l l y re levant content of what a person says i n Hopi o r Apache, then w e should t r a n s l a t e what he says i n t o straightforward English, i t w a s no t my in t en t ion t o ge t a t the pragmatic sense of what people say. My in t en t ion was the q u i t e d i f f e r e n t one of bringing t o l i g h t something about t hese o the r languages which is e n t i r e l y hidden from us i n ordinary t r a n s l a t i o n s , namely, t h e semantic o r metaphysical i.mplications of those languages. extremely useful.--By denying the legit imacy of my conceptual t r a n s l a t i o n s , you are, i n e f f e c t , denying t h a t t he grammatical s t r u c t u r e of a sentence has semantic implications. But you have given no reason f o r denying t h i s , and therefore your c r i t i c i s m s are q u i t e empty."

And f o r t h a t purpose those conceptual t r a n s l a t i o n s are

Assuming t h a t t h i s would have been Whorf's response, what it revea ls i s t h a t he regarded those "conceptual t rans la t ions ' ' as being an extension of (or a v a r i a t i o n on) the semantic d e f i n i t i o n s of p a r t s of speech. he thought of those "conceptual t rans la t ions ' ' as doing f o r a whole sentence what the semantic d e f i n i t i o n s of p a r t s of speech do f o r the p a r t s of a sentence. So i f the la t ter are l eg i t ima te , then the former must be l eg i t ima te a s w e l l . h i s a t t i t u d e toward semantic de f in i t i ons .

That i s ,

And t h i s br ings us back t o an important key t o Whorf's thinking:

Although Whorf does not make t h i s e n t i r e l y e x p l i c i t , a l i t t l e reading between the l i n e s revea ls t h a t h i s concern with semantic d e f i n i t i o n s , i - e . , with how one should regard such de f in i t i ons , i s p a r t of a crusade aga ins t c l a s s i c a l l i n g u i s t i c s . More p a r t i c u l a r l y , he i s crusading aga ins t t he c l a s s i c a l l i n g u i s t s ' imp l i c i t claim t o have i d e n t i f i e d the e s s e n t i a l p a r t s of speech, t he p a r t s of speech which any language must have Ln order t o permit l og ica l thinking. It w a s not Whorf, however, who i n i t i a t e d t h i s crusade, f o r Sapi r , h i s teacher , had a l ready f i r e d the opening sa lvo before Whorf came on the scene. Indeed, Whorf's p a t t e r n of argumen: seems t o have been insp i red by Sap i r ' s , and f o r t h a t reason i t w i l l be useEul t o begin by consfderfng the l a t t e r .

Sap i r ' s argument proceeds a s follows. Referrfng t o ' khe time-honored p a r t s of speech," he remarks:

We imagine, to begin with, t h a t a l l "verbs" a r e inherent ly concerned with ac t ion a s such, t h a t a "noun" i s the name of some d e f i n i t e ob lec t or personal i ty tha t can be p ic tured by the mind,

1 2

JOHN W. COOK

t h a t a l l q u a l i t i e s are necessar i ly expressed by a d e f i n i t e group of words t o which we may appropriately apply the term "adjective." A s soon as we test our vocabulary, w e discover t h a t the pa r t s of speech are f a r from corresponding t o so simple an analysis of r e a l i t y . o r adject ive. equivalent of llfs red" i n which the whole predication (adject ive and verb of being) is conceived of as a verb i n precisely the same way i n which w e think of "extends" o r "lied" o r "sleeps" as a verb. . . . [Yet7 w e can avoid the p a r a l l e l form "it becomes red, i t tu rns red" and say "it reddens." No one denies t h a t "reddens" is as good a verb as "sleeps" o r even "walks". . . . It is merely a matter of English o r of general Indo-European idiom t h a t w e cannot say "it reds" i n the sense of "it is red." There are hundreds of languages t h a t can. many t h a t can express what w e should cal l an ad jec t ive only by

We say "it is red" and def ine "red" as a quality-word We should consider it s t range t o think of an

Indeed the re are

making a p a r t i c i p l e out of a verb. . 39

The argument up t o t h i s point might suggest t h a t Sapir i s headed f o r t he con- c lusion t h a t t he re is something wrong with the idea of word-class meanings. After a l l , i f "He turned red" and "He reddened'' are interchangeable, doesn't t h a t show t h a t t he re is no element of meaning (adjective-meaning) i n the former t h a t is absent i n the lat ter? If so, then grammatical form does not contr ibute t o the meaning of the sentence.--It t u rns out , however, t h a t t h i s is not at a l l the lesson which Sapir draws from h i s example. H e continues:

J u s t as w e can verbify the idea of a qua l i t y i n such cases as "reddens," so w e can represent a qua l i t y o r an ac t ion t o our- s leves as a thing. We speak of "the height of a building'' o r "the f a l l of an apple" qu i t e as though these ideas were p a r a l l e l t o "the roof of a building" o r "the sk in of an apple," fo rge t t i ng t h a t t he nouns (height, f a l l ) have not ceased t o ind ica t e a qua l i t y and an a c t when w e have made them speak with the accent of mere objects . And j u s t as there are languages t h a t make verbs of the great mass of adject ives , so t he re are o the r s t h a t make nouns of them, I n Chinook * I "the b i g table" is "the- table-its-bigness"; i n Tibetan t h e same idea may be expressed by "the t ab le of bigness," very much as w e may say "a man of wealth" instead of "a r i c h man."40

What has happened here is t h i s . and "reddens , I 1 "rich" and "wealth") as counter-examples which demonstrate a confusion i n t h e notion of word-class meanings, Sapir t u rns those very examples i n t o proof t h a t , by means of word-class meanings, w e misrepresent q u a l i t i e s t o ourselves as ac t ions o r things. A t t he same t i m e he is implying tha t he, of course, has no d i f f i c u l t y i n recognizing which word-class meanings a re the r i g h t ones--for example, t h a t t h e word-class meaning of the English ad jec t ive "red" i s as i t ought t o be s ince r e d is ( r ea l ly ) a qua l i t y and not , a s some languages have i t , an act ion.

Instead of regarding h i s examples ("red"

I t i s not always English grammar t h a t Sapir favors i n t h i s way. A few pages earlier he presents an example t o demonstrate t h a t other languages can be superior t o English.

13


I n English we have made up our minds t h a t a l l ac t ion must be conceived of i n reference t o th ree standard t i m e s . I f , therefore , w e des i r e t o state a proposit ion t h a t is as t r u e t:omrrow as i t w a s yesterday, we have t o pretend t h a t t h e present: moment may be elongated fo re and a f t so as t o take i n a l l e t e r n i t y . . . . Hence, "the square root of 4 is 2," precisely as "my uncle is here now." philosophical and dis t inguish between a t r u e "present" and a ~ ~ c u s t o m a r y ~ ~ o r ttgeneral" tense.41

There are many "primitive" languages t h a t are more

In t h i s b i t of reasoning Sapir is thinking i n terms of the semantic de f in i t i on "The present tense r e f e r s t o present t i m e , " and then instead of t r e a t i n g mathematical statements as exceptions (or as tenseless) he at : t r ibutes t o a l l speakers of English a c e r t a i n "pretense" consis tent with the semantic def ini t ion. not ( r ea l ly ) elongated fo re and a f t t o include a l l e t e r n i t y , i t seems clear t o him t h a t those languages which have a general tense are superior t o English i n t h i s respect.

What is the upshot of a l l t h i s ?

And because it seems obvious t o Sapir t h a t the present moment is

Sapir continues the foregoing argument by presenting several more examples and then remarking t h a t , were w e t o con- t inue these comparisons of d i f f e ren t languages, w e would f ind t h a t p a r t s of speech are

t o an astonishing degree ac tua l ly convertible h t o each other. The upshot of such an examination would be t o f e e l convinced t h a t t he "part of speech" r e f l e c t s not so much our i n t u i t i v e analysis of r e a l i t y as our a b i l i t y t o compose t h a t r e a l t t y i n t o a va r i e ty of formal patterns.42

Here, then, w e have a f a i r l y e x p l i c i t statement of t h a t view which Whorf w a s later t o cal l " l i ngu i s t i c relativism." however, but goes on immediately t o a concPusion about classical l i n g u i s t i c s , i .e . , about t he view t h a t t he p a r t s of speech recognized by t:he classical l i n g u i s t s provide the essence of language:

Sapir does not dwell on t h i s point,

A p a r t of speech outside of t he l imi t a t ions of syntactic: form is but a w i l l 0 ' t he wisp. For t h i s reason no log ica l k.e., universal] scheme of t he p a r t s of speech--their number, nature, and necessary confines--is of t he s l i g h t e s t i n t e r e s t t o t he l i n g u i s t . Each language has i ts own scheme.43

Here a t last w e can see the th rus t of the whole argument. undercutting t h e classical l i n g u i s t s ' notion t h a t a l l languages must contain the same pa r t s of speech, and Sapir goes about t h i s by simply pointing out t h a t each language has i ts "own scheme" of word classes, that: some languages, f o r example, use verbs where English uses adject ives .

It: i s aimed a t

Now t o understand t h e o r ig in of Whorf's relativism, one needs t o understand t h a t he, l i k e Sapir , w a s engaged i n t h i s crusdde against c l a s s i c a l l i ngu i s t i c s . t h a t each language "composes" i ts own r e a l i t y , and he has mad.e t h i s an e s sen t i a l weapon i n h i s crusade. reason fo r doing so.

What he has done is t o pick up Sapir ' s passing suggestion

L e t us consider what may ha.ve been h i s

14

JOHN W. COOK

The important po in t t o bear i n mind here i s t h a t the view being a t t r i b u t e d t o t h e classical l i n g u i s t s i s e s s e n t i a l l y the same as t h a t which, as we saw earlier, Whorf a t t r i b u t e s t o t h e "old-school log ic ians ." Whorf's a t t a c k on A r i s t o t l e is p a r t of h i s crusade t o rep lace c l a s s i c a l l i n g u i s t i c s with a b e t t e r l i n g u i s t i c theory. The relevance of t h i s is t h a t Whorf s a w himself as doing b a t t l e with l i n g u i s t s who believed themselves t o have a sound j u s t i f i c a t i o n f o r making t h e word classes of Indo-European languages i n t o a universa l scheme f o r a l l of Language--the j u s t i f i c a t i o n , namely, t h a t they could see, f o r example, t h a t a s tone i s a th ing and t h a t t he re fo re i n any language the word which s t ands f o r a s tone ought t o be ( a s i t i s i n English) a noun.

Now faced wi th such an a t t i t u d e , how w a s Whorf t o ge t a f a i r hearing f o r h i s p lea t h a t l i n g u i s t s should set a s ide t h e i r preconceived ideas about t he grammatical form of Language (it may be, he says , " tha t t h e r e i s no such th ing as "Language" (with a c a p i t a l L) a t all!" (239) ) and approach each new language with a wi l l ingness t o take it on i t s own terms? Would i t be s u f f i c i e n t simply t o provide c a r e f u l desc r ip t ions of exo t i c languages, desc r ip t ions which would show t h a t they d id not f i t t he ca tegor ies of c l a s s i c a l l i n g u i s t i c s ? Whorf sometimes provides such desc r ip t ions , bu t he ev ident ly thought t h a t such an approach would no t , by i t s e l f , be ef- f e c t i v e i n showing c l a s s i c a l l i n g u i s t s t h e e r r o r of t h e i r ways. Af te r a l l , i f they, l i k e A r i s t o t l e , were persuaded t h a t they can see t h a t a s tone i s a th ing , t h a t red i s a q u a l i t y , and t h a t t i m e i s a flowing continuum with a p a s t , p resent , and fu tu re , then su re ly they w i l l a l s o th ink t h a t i n order t o speak of such th ings (or t o speak of them properly) one ' s language m u s t conta in , even i f i n a disguised form, t h e appropr ia te grammatical forms, namely, those found i n Indo-European languages. And of course i f they b r ing t h i s assumption t o t h e i r study of e x o t i c languages, they w i l l then proceed t o fo rce those languages i n t o t h e i r preconceived molds--no matter how r e c a l c i t r a n t t h e ma te r i a l may be. This i s the a t t i t u d e t h a t Whorf is apparently r e f e r r i n g t o when he warned t h a t "we tend t o th ink i n our own language i n order t o examine t h e e x o t i c language" (138).

I t must have seemed t o Whorf, then, t h a t i n order t o counter t h i s a t t i t u d e toward language i t would be necessary t o a t t a c k t h e assumption which g ives rise t o i t , namely, t h e assumption t h a t w e can p e r f e c t l y w e l l see t h a t a s tone i s a th ing , t h a t t i m e is a flowing continuum, and so on-- i n shoz t , t h e assumption t h a t t h e r e are ob jec t ive ly d iscernable onto logica l ca tegor ies t o which grammar must conform. Whorf's response t o t h i s is t o say: In thinking t h a t they can see such th ings , t hese l i n g u i s t s and philosophers are but t he pr i soners and dupes of t h e i r own language. The Categories which they claim t o see are not ob jec t ive ly given t o a l l ob- s e rve r s independently of language. Quite t he cont ra ry . They have projected onto t h e world (and pos i t i ve ly see them the re ) those ca t egor i e s which form the s t r u c t u r e of t h e i r own na t ive tongue.

How does Whorf support t h i s claim? fit t i m e s he proceeds i n much the same manner a s Sapi r d id i n the passages quoted above, i . e . , by comparing English (o r Indo-European languages i n general) with some exo t i c language. In such cases h i s argument seems t o be chat i f only the c l a s s i c a l l i n g u i s t s had postponed drawing any conclusions u n t i l a g r e a t e r v a r i e t y of languages had been surveyed, they would no t have beromp convinced t h a t t h e ca t egor i e s found i n Indo-European languages a r e e s s e n t i a l . A t o the r times Whorf

15


proceeds with examples drawn e n t i r e l y from English. seems t o be t h a t of debunking the view t h a t English can be seen t o conta in t h e correct word-class meanings. passages, f o r they revea l as c l e a r l y as anything could Whorf's a t t i t u d e toward grammar and word-class meanings.

I n these cases h i s a i m

I want now t o consider s eve ra l such

I n one such passage he d isputes the adequacy of t h e noun-verb d i s t i n c t i o n i n English. Having remarked t h a t English grammar d i s t ingu i shes a noun class from a verb c l a s s of words, he continues:

Our language thus gives us a b ipo la r d iv i s ion of na ture . na ture he r se l f i s not thus polarized. I f i t be sa id t h a t ' s t r i k e , tu rn , run' are verbs because they denote temporary o r shor t - las t ing events , i .e . , ac t ions , why then is ' f i s t ' a noun? It a l s o is a temporary event. Why are ' l i gh tn ing , spark , wave, eddy, pu lsa t ion , flame, storm, phase, cycle, spasm, noise , emotion' nouns? They are temporary events. (215)

But

What l e s son d id Whorf mean t o teach us with these examples? t o teach us t h a t t h e r e is something wrong with the not ion of word-class meanings. On the cont ra ry , he takes it f o r granted t h a t t h e semantic def in i - t i o n "Nouns s tand f o r things" co r rec t ly exp l i ca t e s t he word-class meaning of " f i s t , " "storm," "spasm," and so on. (He i s a l s o taking i t f o r granted t h a t he, being f reed from the shackles of English grammar, can see t h a t f i s t s , storms, and spasms are not th ings but events.) meant t o l e a r n , then, is t h i s : s ince w e allow ourse lves t o u s e nouns f o r speaking of f i s t s , storms, and spasms, i t must be t h a t we f a i l t o recognize t h a t they are events r a t h e r than th ings , and t h i s f a i l u r e is due t o the f a c t t h a t we can recognize as events only what our language des igna tes by means of verbs. Whorf states the matter t h i s way: ''an 'event ' t o us means 'what our language c l a s ses as a verb'" (215). j e c t i v e l y discerned onto logica l ca tegor ies .

H e d id not mean

The l e s son w e are

So English i s no t modeled on ob-

Another passage i n which Whorf means t o teach us the same lesson runs as follows:

English terms, l i k e 'sky, h i l l , swamp,' persuade us t o regard some e lus ive aspec t of na tu re ' s endless v a r i e t y as a d i s t i n c t THING, almost l i k e a t a b l e o r cha i r . tongues lead us t o th ink of the universe as a c o l l e c t i o n of r a the r d i s t i n c t ob jec ts . . . .(240)

Thus English and similar

I n another passage English i s accused of making objec ts of "subjec t ive duratfon" :

Such terms as 'summer, winter, September, morning, noon, sunse t ' are with us nouns, and have l i t t l e formal l i n g u i s t i c df f fe rence from other nouns. o r ob jec t s , and we say ' a t sunset ' o r ' i n win ter ' j u s t a s w e say 'at t he corner ' o r ' i n an orchard. ' They a r e p lura l fzed and numerated l i k e nouns of physical ob jec ts : . . . Our thought about the r e fe ren t s of such words hence becomes ob jec t i f f ed . Without o b j e c t i f i c a t i o n , i t would be a subjec t ive experience of "becoming l a t e r and l a t e r " . . . .(142)

They can be sub jec t s

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JOHN W. COOK

Whorf elaborates on this when he adds: "It is part of our whole scheme of OBJECTIFYING--imaginatively spatializing qualities and potentials that are quite nonspatial. . . . Noun-meaning (with us) proceeds from physical bodies to referents of far other sorts" (145).

What we find in these three passages is a most curious use of examples, the same as we found in Sapir's treatment of "redden" and "the height of a building." One would think that the right way to regard those words which Whorf parades before us here is to regard them as plain proof that there is something wrong with the notion that all nouns have a common word-class meaning. as a t h ing , despite the fact that these words are nouns. (No one would ask, "What is that thing on the horizon? in yourleg? A spasm?") Sapir, he presents us with what would appear to be obvious counter-examples to the notion of word-class meaning and then turns them into an argument for linguistic relativism, i.e., treats them as proof that we think of the world in a way dictated by our language. What are we to make of this curious reasoning? How are we to explain the fact that, even in the face of apparent counter-examples, Whorf retains his attachment to the notion of word-class meaning?

For surely no one really thinks of summer or a sunset or a spasm

Sunset?" or "What is that thing But Whorf does not see the matter this way. Like

Before answering this question, let us be clear about what exactly is involved in this notion of word-class meanings. This much is quite obvious: Whorf, like Sapir, thinks that the semantic definition "Nouns stand for things" is a definition which holds for each and every noun in the language, that it has no exceptions. And of course he also thinks that the same goes for the semantic definitions of "verb," "adjective," ''present tense," and so on. Moreover, in his equation of semantics with ontology, Whorf is taking it for granted that when such terms as "thing," "event," "puality," "present time," and so on are used in semantic definitions, they are being used in the way philosophers use them, i.e., as ontological terms. I will try to say something about both these aspects of Whorf's view.

Whorf was not unaware of the fact that there were linguists critical of semantic definitions. At one point he remarks: "I do not share the complete distrust of all functional definitions which a few modern grammarians seem to show" (88). He does not identify these "modern grammarians," but the sort of "distrust" that they showed was very likely the sort expressed by Otto Jespersen in his 1924 essay, "The Teaching of Grammar":

. . if there is one thing I dislike in grammar, it is definitions of the kind too frequently met with in textbooks. They are neither exhaustive nor true; they are not, and cannot have, the precision and clearness of the definitions found in textbooks of mathematics, and it is extremely easy to pick holes in them. . . . The definitions found even in the best grammars . . . are unsatis- factory. . , and I do not think they are necessary. When children begin to learn about cats and dogs, they do not start with tne definitions of what a cat is or what a dog is. . . . The same method :of teaching without definitions] may just as well be used with regard to substantives and adjectives, etc.44

17


Whorf and Jespersen seem t o agree on one thing: d e f i n i t i o n s ought t o be a i r t i g h t , admitt ing of no exceptions. t o der ive from the f a c t t h a t they regard d e f i n i t i o n s as purported t r u t h s and therefore f a l s i f i a b l e by any genuine exception. This, a t l e a s t , i s how they seem t o regard the semantic d e f i n i t i o n s of word classes. company, of course, is over t h e question of whether t h e r e are exceptions t o those semantic de f in i t i ons . Jespersen, holding t h a t t he re a r e exceptions, dec la res the d e f i n i t i o n s t o be "ne i ther exhaustive nor true." Whorf, as w e know, takes t h e view t h a t they are t r u e and t h a t a l l apparent exceptions are t o be explained away.

L e t us consider, f i r s t , what might be s a i d of Jespersen's view of t he

they share t h e view t h a t And t h i s seems

Where they p a r t

matter. Bearing i n mind t h a t he is s p e c i f i c a l l y concerned with semantic de f in i t i ons i n grammar books used i n the schools, t he following criticism seem appropriate.

One need not th ink of semantic d e f i n i t i o n s as t r u t h s i n x d e r t o allow Cer ta in ly when they appear i n t h e grammar books t h a t they have some merit.

meant f o r school ch i ldren they are serving the re as h e u r i s t i c devices which, along with o ther th ings , are meant t o enable s tudents t o ge t the hang of such grammatical terms a s "noun" and "verb." t o consider whether they are t r u e o r f a l s e . They should be evaluated, r a the r , on how w e l l they serve the h e u r i s t i c purpose f o r which they are intended. So i n t h i s respec t , Jespersen ' s complaint seems inappropriate.--Rut now someone may want t o ob jec t t h a t any de f in i t i on , i f i t i s t o serve i t s purpose, must be a i r t i g h t , admitt ing of no exceptions. This, however, seems to be only a s u p e r s t i t i o n about de f in i t i ons . For ins tance , if d ic t iona ry e n t r i e s are t o be thought of as d e f i n i t i o n s , then w e have p len ty of d e f i n i t i o n s t o which t h a t s t r i c t u r e does not apply. For no one using genera l d i c t i o n a r i e s i n the ordinary way i s put of f by the f a c t t h a t many d ic t iona ry e n t r i e s are both ' too broad' and ' too narrow.' (To take but one example: d i c t iona ry e n t r i e s fo r "chair" seem t o inc lude th ings t h a t are not chairs--such th ings a s thrones and thea te r seats, while no t including such th ings as bean bag cha i r s , e l e c t r i c cha i r s , and boatswain's cha i rs . ) This f a c t doesn't make Webster's d e f i n i t i o n s f a l s e , f o r they a r e n ' t parading the re as t ru ths . The r o l e of such d e f i n i t i o n s i s t o g ive one a s tar t with the new dord, leaving one eventually t o proceed on one's own i n learn ing f u r t h e r v a r i a t i o n s and complexities of i t s use. And t h i s holds a l s o f o r t he semantic d e f i n i t i o n s of p a r t s of speech. They need not , t o se rve t h e i r purpose, a d m i t of no exceptions. I f they e f f e c t i v e l y enable school ch i ldren t o ge t the hang of "noun" and "verb," then the re i s no reason t o f ind f a u l t with them. They may, of course, prove less e f f e c t i v e than o ther means, bu t t h a t need not be because they a r e ' f a l s e . ' It may a l s o be t h a t they are p e r f e c t l y use less i n l i n g u i s t i c s , bu t t h a t i s another matter a l toge ther .

It would thus seem i r r e l e v a n t

Whorf, of course, wanted t o g ive semantic d e f i n i t i o n s a r o l e i n l i n g u i s t i c s , and a s such he wanted them t o be l i k e d e f i n i t i o n s found i n geometry, d e f i n i t i o n s which admit of no exceptions. Now one dould th ink t h a t anyone who wanted t o g ive semantic d e f i n i t i o n s such a r o l e would begin by t ry ing to see whether, without producing something too cumbersome, he could augment the d e f f n i t i o n s i n such a way t h a t they are n e i t h e r t3o broad nor too narrow, thus eliminating exceptions. For example, the d e f i n i t i o n of 'houri" would have t o be augmented so a s t o include not only w o r d s f o r th ings , and not only words f o r persons, p laces , and th ings , bu t a l s o Jords f o r

18

JOHN W. COOK

seasons and words f o r r e f l e c t i v e phenomena, s o as t o properly cover such nouns as "summer" and "sky." Whorf, of course, does no t do t h i s . H e perverse ly s t i c k s wi th "Nouns s tand f o r th ings ," and he then reasons t h a t "summer," being a noun, implies t h a t summer is a thing. But as w e can now see, such reasoning is as misguided as it would be t o reason t h a t s ince dic- t i ona ry e n t r i e s f o r "chair" mention a seat and l egs , w e necessa r i ly imply, whenever w e say , "Pull your c h a i r c lose r , " t h a t t h e cha i r w e a r e speaking of has a seat and legs--even when i t i s a bean bag cha i r . now see another d i f f i c u l t y i n Whorf's reasoning. H e c r e d i t s himself wi th being ab le t o recognize t h a t n e i t h e r t h e sky nor a summer is a th ing , and he a t t r i b u t e s t h i s t o t h e f a c t t h a t h i s f a m i l i a r i t y with many languages has f reed h i s mind from t h e impl ica t ions of English word-classes and has thus given him an undis tor ted view of t h e metaphysical aspec t of t he world. But no such explana t ion i s ca l l ed f o r . r e s t of us, has mastered t h e use of t he word "thing," a word which w e do not use i n speaking of t he sky o r a summer.

This b r ings us t o t h e second d i f f i cu l tyabou t Whorf's view of semantic

We can a l s o

The t r u t h i s t h a t Whorf, l i k e the

d e f i n i t i o n s . i n those f ami l i a r d e f i n i t i o n s , as being metaphysical terms, as terms s ign i fy ing on to log ica l ca tegor ies . H e must th ink , then, t h a t because we can a l l understand those d e f i n i t i o n s , w e must a l l have some def in ing (phi losophica l ) cri teria of what a th ing is and what an event is , s o t h a t if w e were no t impeded by t h e word-class meanings of our n a t i v e tongue, w e could i d e n t i f y something by those c r i t e r i a as being a th ing o r an event. But t h i s i s simply not so. The words "thing" and "event" are not words of t h a t k ind , are no t words f o r i d e n t i f i a b l e k inds of something o r o the r . t he re is nothing comparable f o r th ings o r events. While w e may see t h a t someone is n o t empty-handed, w e do no t see, nor do w e th ink w e see, t h a t what he is car ry ing i s a thing ( a s w e might see t h a t what he is car ry ing is a gun).

H e regards the words "thing" and "event," as they appear

While w e may i d e n t i f y a b i r d as being a nuthatch o r a k i l l d e e r ,

Whorf has f a i l e d t o understand what It is about t h e words "thing" and "event" t h a t makes them usable i n semantic d e f i n i t i o n s . F i r s t of a l l , t hese are f ami l i a r , everyday words and not a t a l l recondi te . ( I f they r e a l l y were, as Whorf t h inks , metaphysical terms, then school ch i ld ren could hard ly be expected t o b e n e f i t from those grammar book d e f i n i t i o n s . ) Secondly, t h e i r f a m i l i a r use i s such t h a t "thing" i s pecu l i a r ly r e l a t e d t o nouns and "event" pecu l i a r ly r e l a t e d t o verbs (andto nouns derived from verbs) . For in s t ance , i f w e a sk , "What is t h a t th ing i n your hand?" w e expect an answer t o be given i n noun form: "A na i l " o r "A stone." And "event" r egu la r ly turns up i n such contex ts a s "Flying t h a t plane was the g r e a t e s t event of h f s l i f e . " There is thus a kind of symbiosis of "thing" with (some) nouns and "event" wi th (some) verbs , and i t i s because of t h i s chat school ch i ld ren can b e n e f i t from those semantic def in i t ions- - which, as w e can now see, are not r e a l l y semantic i n t he way t h a t Whorf i s thinking they are. (Natura l ly , t he re are o the r f a c t o r s as w e l l t h a t come i n t o play i n a c h i l d ' s l ea rn ing t o i d e n t i f y p a r t s cf speech, such a s t h a t nouns take t h e d e f i n i t e and i n d e f i n i t e a r t i c l e s and can be p lu ra l i zed . ) In o the r words, i f t h e semantic d e f i n i t i o n he has been given he lps a c h i l d t o i d e n t i f y t h e noun i n "I see a bead," t h i s i s not because he has looked a t what h i s mother c a l l s "beads'' and has recognized t h a t rhey f i t some phi loscphica l conception of a thing, but r a the r because h i s grasp

19


of English enables him to understand that "bead" is one of thc'se words that may be used in answering questions containing the word "thing"--such as "What's that thing I see under the sofa?"

These several explanations of how Whorf has misconceived semantic definitions still leave us wfth the question of why he was so attached to the idea of word-class meanings. Why, in other words, did he deal with apparent counter-examples to the idea of word-class meanings so very differently from Jespersen?

An answer to this question was already given at the end clf Section V, namely, that Whorf was himself a metaphysician. But we can nclw expand that explanation. connection between grammar and metaphysics--for example, between tenses and what philosophers say about time. Whorf was convinced that a language contains an implicit metaphysics, which can be read off (in what Sapir calls "conceptual translations") from the grammar of a language. have (semantic) meaning. Accordingly, when it comes to the question of whether word classes have meaning (noun-meaning, verb-meaning, etc.), the answer seemed obvious to Whorf: Of course they have meaning! But this re- quires Whorf to explain away all apparent exceptions to the semantic definitions, since they are what explicate the supposed meanings. has a ready way of doing this: exceptions--such noun forms as "summer" and "sunset"--as being, simply further instances of the false metaphysics built into Indo-European languages. These apparent exceptions, that is, fit in with his view that some languages have grammatical forms which are inappropriate to the ontological structure of the world, while other languages provide forms which "correspond better" (143) to reality, which are "closer to natural fact" (80>.45

Whorf would have found it quite unthinkable, then, to accept Jespersen's

Like many other philosophers, Whorf noticed that there is some

So quite apart from anything in linguistics,

But this is the same as to say that grammatical forms

And Whorf he treats those words which are apparent

verdict that we can easily "pick holes'' in semantic definitions and that they are "neither exhaustive nor true." to denying that grammatical forms have meanfng.46 have suggested that there is something profoundly amiss with much of metaphysics. It would have suggested, that is, that metaphysical categories are nothingbut the ill-conceived results of philosophers' mistakenly treating grammatical categories as (semantic) meaning categories. But if the central concepts of metaphysics turn out in this way to be nothing more than grammatical ffctfons, then we can only conclude that philosophers have all along been mistaken in thinking that the 'world' has a metaphysical aspect. And for Whorf such an idea would have been simply incredible--or rather, it would never have crossed his mind.47

For accepting that verdict amounts And that, in turn, would

So by a circuitous route we have returned to the conclusion reached at the end of Section V: Whorf's linguistic relativism was not a revolutionary linguistic theory, founded on empirical studies, but was rather the product of (i) his familiarity with various exotic languages and (ii) his own metaphysical inclinations, which led him to read into those languages a metaphysics different from the one philosophers are inclined to read into English and its related languages.

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JOHN W. COOK

VII

It was pointedoutin Section V that whereas Whorf saw fit to oppose the "old-school logicians" by offering a new account of the origin of ideas (word- class meanings), there were two other alternatives which did not occur to him: rejecting the very notion of word-class meanings or, more radically, rejecting the entire Lockean account of language and meanings (ideas). considered the first of these in some detail, and I have suggested several criticisms of Whorf's notion of word-class meanings--of his "conceptual translations" and his thinking about semantic definitions. however, do not really get to the bottom of things, and it is time now that we turn our attention to the second of those alternatives, for it t s only here that we can come to grips with the fundamental assumption of linguistic relativism.

We have now

These criticisms,

When I suggested at the beginning of Section V that Whorf's thesis is really a variation on an old philosophical theme, I meant to imply that the difference between Whorf's account of language and the account found in, for example, Locke, f.e., their difference over the origin of ideas, is far less significant than the similarity between them. The essential similarity consists, in part at least, in their shared notions about meaning and thinking-- that meanings are ideas in the mind and that these ideas are the "materials" of which thoughts are made. Whorf stand together on one side of an important philosophical watershed, on the other side of which stands the work of the later Wittgenstein.

In their acceptance of these notions Locke and

In The Blue Book Wfttgenstein makes a suggestion about how one may come to embrace those notions of thought and meaning which Locke and Whorf share. We are inclined to think, he says, that

without a sense, without a thought, a proposition would be an utterly dead and trivial thing. And further it seems clear that no adding of inorganic signs can make the proposition live. And the conclusion which one draws from this is that what must be added to the dead signs in order to make a live proposf- tfon is something immaterial, with properties different from all mere signs. . .

The mistake we are liable to make could be expressed thus: We are looking f o r the use of a sign, but we look for it as though it were an object c o - e x i s t i n g with the sign. . . . One is tempted to imagine that which gives the sentence life as something in an occult sphere, accompanying the sentence. 48

Wittgenstein's cryptic suggestion here about "use" is made somewhate clearer in Phi losophical I n v e s t i g a t i o n s when he emphasizes the importance in philosophy of recognizing that "the speaking of language is part of an (As examples of such activities he mentions such things as giving orders and obeying them, reporting an event, speculating about an event, forming and testing a hypothesis, making up a story and reading it, telling a joke, solving a problem in pracical arithmetic, asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying.) Now if we put this together with the passage from The Blue Book, we have the suggestion that the Lockean notion of meaning arises from a failure to appreciate that speaking has its setting in human activities. This suggestion seems to me to be right, and I will now try to explain why I think so .

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One way t o e x p l a i n t h i s i s t o say t h a t n e i t h e r Locke n o r Whorf would have been s t r u c k by a c e r t a i n o d d i t y i n P l a t o ' s Allegory of t h e Cave. o d d i t y I r e f e r t o i s conta ined i n t h e fol lowing passage:

The

Next, s a i d I, h e r e is a p a r a b l e t o i l l u s t r a t e t h e degrees i n which o u r n a t u r e may b e en l igh tened o r unenl ightened. Imagine t h e c o n d i t i o n of men l i v i n g i n a s o r t of cavernous chamber under- ground. . . . Here they have been from chi ldhood, chained by t h e l e g and a l s o by t h e neck, s o t h a t they cannot move and can see only what i s i n f r o n t of them,because t h e cha ins w i l l n o t l e t them t u r n t h e i r heads. of a f i r e burning behind them; and between t h e p r i s o n e r s and t h e f i r e i s a t r a c k w i t h a parape t b u i l t a long it . . . . Now behind t h i s parape t imagine persons c a r r y i n g along v a r i o u s a r t i f i c i a l o b j e c t s , i n c l u d i n g f i g u r e s of men and animals i n wood o r s t o n e o r o t h e r materials, which p r o j e c t above t h e parape t . Natura l ly , some of t h e s e persons Ecarrying t h e a r t i f i c i a l o b j e c t 4 w i l l be t a l k i n g , o t h e r s s i l e n t .

p r i s o n e r s .

t o one another , would they not suppose t h a t t h e i r words r e f e r r e d o n l y t o those pass ing shadows which they s a w ?

A t some d i s t a n c e h igher up i s t h e l i g h t

It i s a s t r a n g e p i c t u r e , h e s a i d , and a s t r a n g e s o r t o f

Like o u r s e l v e s , I r e p l i e d . . . Now, i f they could t a l k

Necessar i ly , And suppose t h e i r p r i s o n has an echo from t h e w a l l f a c i n g

them. When one of t h e people c r o s s i n g behind them spoke , they could only suppose t h a t t h e sound came from t h e shadow p a s s i n g b e f o r e t h e i r eyes -

No doubt. I n every way, then, such p r i s o n e r s would recognize L L S

r e a l i t y noth ing b u t t h e shadows of t h o s e a r t i f i c i a l o b j e c t s . 5 0

Now t h e o d d i t y h e r e , which I t h i n k n e i t h e r Locke nor Whorf would have n o t i c e d , i s t h i s : t o b e chained i n t h i s way from childhood and hence t o b e doinq noth ing h e has made i t impossible t o suppose t h a t they speak a t a l l . P l a t o wants us t o canclude about them, namely, t h a t they recognize no " r e a l i t y " but t h e shadows, we are meant t o suppose t h a t t h e s e people are very d i f f e r e n t from us i n important r e s p e c t s . FOP i n s t a n c e , they n u s t n o t b e thought of as ever e a t i n g o r d r i n k i n g anything, f o r i f they d1.d s o , they would l e a r n about food and d r i n k and t h e v e s s e l s they are served i n , and w e could t h e n suppose t h a t as i n f a n t s they c r y f o r food and l a t e r on l e a r n t o ask f o r i t . But obviously P l a t o cannot a l low t h i s , f o r how then could he conclude t h a t they know of no " r e a l i t y " except t h e shadows? are t o suppose t h a t they do n o t eat and d r i n k and do n o t a s k f o r a cup of water o r a p i e c e of bread o r complain t h a t t h e soup is too hot: o r apologize f o r s p i l l i n g t h e milk. Much of t h e t a l k t h a t i s common t o our chi ldhood, then , cannot come i n here . b e s a i d i n connect ion w i t h t h e s e t h a t w e have t o exclude h e r e : w e have t o exclude any such d e a l i n g s o r a c t i v i t i e s i n connect ion w i t h w h x h human de- sires o r i n t e r e s t s o r concerns might g i v e one occas ion f o r s a y i n g something. We are t o take F l a t o as s p e c i f y i n g t h a t t h e s e p r i s o n e r s t a l k only about t h e shadows.

i t e v i d e n t l y d i d n o t occur t o P l a t o t h a t by imagining t h e s e people

Judging from what

So e v i d e n t l y w e

And i t is n o t j u s t food and d r i n k and what might

22

JOHN W. COOK

But what sense is t he re t o t h i s suggestion? What, f o r ins tance , would the p r i sone r s have t o say about t h e shadows? the shadows as we ask f o r o r complain about food and drink? c a r e f u l no t t o a t t r i b u t e t o P l a t o ' s p r i sone r s i n t e r e s t s of the kind t h a t we might have i n shadows. For example, w e do not want a shadow across t h e book we are reading, un less t o s h i e l d i t from b r i g h t sun l igh t ; we do not want a shadow across the face of a person we are photographing, un less f o r s p e c i a l e f f e c t ; w e play games by making shadow r a b b i t s on t h e wall with our hands; we sometimes look f o r a shadow t o h ide i n ; w e peer i n t o shadows t o see what might be lurk ing the re , and s o on. None of t h i s is t o come i n t o P l a t o ' s parab le , f o r h i s pr i soners have been s i t t i n g t h e r e from chfldhood, rendered immobile by t h e i r chains. But it is i n connection with these doings and these i n t e r e s t s of ours t h a t w e t a l k about shadows ("Your shadow is on my book," "Make h i s ears wiggle," "Stand i n t h a t shadow"), and now w e are asked t o suppose t h a t P l a t o ' s p r i soners , although incapable of any such a e t f v f t f e s , t a l k about shadows. Surely P la to i s supposing more than he is e n t i t l e d t o here. H e is supposing t h a t they might t a l k about shadows although they have nothing t o say.

Can they ask f o r o r complain about Here w e must be

It i s not only P la to , of course, who has f a i l e d t o no t i ce t h e oddity of h i s parable but a l s o the rest of us, who a r e untroubled as w e read through t h i s passage. Why, then, are we a l l so obl iv ious t o t h e oddi ty of t h e parable?

Perhaps w e th ink i t q u i t e easy t o imagine these p r i sone r s t o t a l k . Can w e no t , a f t e r a l l , imagine something l i k e a cartoon drawing of one of them s i t t i n g before the shadows on t h e w a l l with some sentence in- sc r ibed i n t h e ba l loon above h i s head--for ins tance , t he sentence "It's moving"? Why can ' t we imagine him t o say, "It's moving," although we leave it unspecified whether he i s repor t ing h i s success i n g e t t i n g the shadow moving aga in o r exclaiming a t someone's mistake i n allowing t h e shadow t o move o r answezing some ques t ion put t o him by an experimental psychologist--indeed, leav ing i t Unspecified whether he is doing anything a t a l l ? so why can ' t we imagine him j u s t t o u t t e r t h i s sentence (or t he comparable sentence i n Greek)? Czn't he j u s t be s t a t i n g what he sees? Surely (we think) t h i s sentence has a meaning of its own, and expresses a thought, q u i t e a p a r t from any a c t i v i t i e s it might e n t e r i n to .

Af te r a l l , t he re i s i n our language the sentence "It 's moving,"

It i s some such idea a s t h i s t h a t c a r r i e s us untroubled through a reading of P l a t o ' s parable. And having taken t h i s t u rn i n our thinking about what i t is t o say something, w e are now set on a course which can only l ead us i n t o deeper confusion. For having put words i n t o t h e mouth of our p r i sone r while g iv ing him nothing t o say , we thereby p lace the burden of saying Something on the sentence w e imagine t o be inscr ibed i n the balloon above h i s head. This , o r course, i s a most common theme i n what philosophers say about speaking--or i n what they say about language ( i t is o f t e n unclear which they mean t o be t a lk ing about). When we phflo- sophfze about these matters, w e tend t o represent speaking as though i t cons i s t s of pur t ing sentences on publ ic d i sp lay , and then our t a sk becomes t h a t C € t ry ing t o f igu re out how sentences can say somethlng t o the l i s t e n i n g pubkfc,51 i s but a series cf sounds or marks on paper and t h a t these by themselves can say nothing

Our f i r s t move here i s csually t c i n s i s t tha tasentence

So ncw we must Invoke s t i l l mcrc philosophical machinery i n

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o r d e r t o i n v e s t l i f e i n t h e s e o therwise l i f e l e s s t h i n g s : w e say t h a t i n a d d i t i o n t o t h e sounds we make t h e r e are meanings a s s o c i a t e d .with them o r thoughts expressed by them. I n t h i s way w e t r y t o f i l l t h e vacuumwe have unwi t t ing ly c r e a t e d by dropping o u t of our account t h e a c t i v i t i e s of which speaking i s a p a r t . The r e s u l t i n g p i c t u r e , then , is t h a t of two p a r a l l e l series: t h e sounds we make and t h e thoughts o r meanings t h a t go through our heads as we make them.

But t h i s p i c t u r e of what i t is t o say something i s really a mons t ros i ty . I n t h e f i r s t p lace , i t sould s t r i k e u s as absurd t o main ta in t h a t sen tences say something. Sentences don ' t t a l k ; people do. And so sen tences don ' t s a y anything, e i t h e r . Secondly, t h e r e i s something amfss i n us ing grammarians' terms, such as "word" and "sentence," t o t r y t o e x p l a i n what it is t o s a y something. These a re r a t h e r s p e c i a l terms of a r t , terms whfch w e use i n teaching c h i l d r e n about grammatical c o n s t r u c t i o n o r f o r commenting on how someone has s a i d something o r f o r t a l k i n g i n r e c o n d i t e ways about language (not speaking) , and it can only cause havoc i n o u r th inking i f w e t r y t o employ t h e s e terms of ar t f o r a purpose they were never meant t o serve. t h e havoc we thereby cause f s t h a t when w e t a l k of ' sen tences ' i n t h i s phi lo- s o p h i c a l way, we then want t o provide a f u r t h e r ' a n a l y s i s ' of them, and t h i s l e a d s us t o s a y s i l l y t h i n g s , such as t h a t speaking c o n s i s t s , p a r t l y , i n u t t e r i n g sounds. When we are be ing whipped on by our p h i l o s o p h f c a l motives , w e tend n o t t o n o t i c e how s i l l y t h i s f s , bu t i t f s r e a l l y no less s i l l y than say ing t h a t t o pay someone i n c o i n of t h e realm c o n s f s t s of g i v i n g someone p i e c e s of metal. I n a b a r t e r economy one might gfve someone pieces of metal i n exchange f o r a p i g , b u t paying f o r a p i g i n cofn of t h e realm does n o t c o n s i s t , even p a r t l y , i n g iv ing someone p i e c e s of metal. And t a l k i n g no more l e n d s i t s e l f t o ' a n a l y s i s ' than paying does. Talking does n o t c o n s i s t , even p a r t l y , i n u t t e r i n g sounds. The la t ter is n o t p a r t o f t a l k i n g b u t something o t h e r than t a l k i n g : "He t r i e d t o t a l k , b u t a l l h e could do was t o u t t e r a few sounds." And t h i s shows how f u t i l e i t must b e t o t r y t o r e c o n s t i t u t e t a l k i n g o u t of u t t m i n g sounds by throwing 'meanings' o r ' thoughts ' i n t o t h e ba tch . Let us examine t h f s more f u l l y ,

A p a r t of

Let us r e t u r n t o our p r i s o n e r and h i s ' sen tence ' "It 's moving'' and a s k ourse lves what thought t h i s i s supposed t o express . If we say t h a t t h e sen- t e n c e expresses t h e thought t h a t i t ( t h e shadow) i s moving, we have only repea ted t h e words and have s a f d nothing very i l l u m i n a t i n g . I f w e begin t o remind ourse lves of t h e g r e a t v a r i e t y of c i rcumstances i n which someone might say , "It's moving," and cons ider a l s o t h e v a r i o u s tones of v o i c e i n whfch someone might say t h i s ( t r iumphant ly , a n g r i l y , d e s p a i r i n g l y , accus ingly , j o k i n g l y , e t c . ) , w e soon begin t o l o s e o u r conffdence t h a t t h e r e i s some one thought which i s u n i v e r s a l l y ( o r even u s u a l l y ) p r e s e n t when s3meone s a y s , " I t ' s moving." Consider j u s t two cases: (1) a c h i l d who has j u s t been g iven an explanatfon of how sun d i a l s work p e e r s s k e p t i c a l l y f o r s e v e r a l minutes a t t h e shadow on t h e d f a l and then exclaims, "It is moving!" i n a tone of d e l i g h t e d s u r p r i s e , and (2 ) a teenager , walking along a street a t n i g h t , laughingly cal ls h i s companion's a t t e n t i o n t o what "lo43ks almost l i k e t h e shadow of a man'' po in t fng a gun a t t h e wfndow above; then i n h o r r o r h e suddenly gasps, "It 's moving!" and t h e two of them f l e a i n a panfc. Now i s it r e a l l y p l a u s i b l e t o main ta in t h a t concurrent w i t h t h e c h i l d ' s exclamation and che teenager ' s gasp t h e r e f s some one mental s t a t e which we can regard as the thought expressed by "It's moving" and which we can now a t t r i b u t e t o P l a t c ' s p r i s o n e r s if they say , "It 's moving"? I t h i n k w e d o n ' t know q u i t e

JOHN W. COOK

what t o s a y h e r e . o r d i n a r y s e n s e , i s supposed t o b e d e c i s i v e h e r e , then t h e answer t o o u r ques- t i o n would seem t o be: No, t h e r e i s n o t some common mental s tate i n t h e two cases. A f t e r a l l , t h e c h i l d was s tudying t h e s u n d i a l i n t e n t l y , and when h e t h e n n o t i c e d something he had n o t been q u i t e prepared t o b e l i e v e , h e w a s sur - p r i s e d and d e l i g h t e d . I n t h e case of t h e teenager , on t h e o t h e r hand, w e have something l i k e amusement t u r n i n g suddenly t o h o r r o r and panic . what t h e c h i l d and t h e teenager s a w w a s n o t a t a l l t h e same. Now i s t h e r e , along- s i d e o r underneath t h e s e obvious d i f f e r e n c e s , something i n common, some shared thought , i n t h e two cases? It i s d i f f i c u l t , a t b e s t , t o see what t h a t could be. It i s c e r t a i n l y n a t anything obvious.

C e r t a i n l y i f a person ' s mental state, i n something l i k e t h e

Moreover,

But t h i s is n o t t h e wors t of o u r d i f f i c u l t i e s . I f o u r i d e a i s t h a t P l a t o ' s p r i s o n e r i s t o b e thought of as s imply s t a t i n g t h e t r u t h , say ing what h e sees, w e are n e g l e c t i n g t h e f a c t t h a t whether w e would s a y t h a t some- t h i n g h a s moved--or t h a t we have s e e n something move--depends on a v a r i e t y of c o n t e x t u a l f a c t o r s . I f w e are photographing someone and h e t u r n s h i s head whi le t h e s h u t t e r is open, we might s a y , "You moved." p l a y e r i s t o l d by t h e b a c k f i e l d judge , "You moved" ( a s e x p l a n a t i o n of t h e p e n a l t y a s s e s s e d ) , h e i s be ing accused of something o t h e r t h a n merely t u r n i n g h i s head. I f your car i s b locking t r a f f i c on a snow-fi l led street and you are t o l d t o "move i t ," you won't have succeeded i n doing so i f you have managed only t o rock i t back and f o r t h i n i t s r u t s , and y e t i t is easy t o imagine o t h e r c o n t e x t s i n which someone's rocking t h e c a r back and f o r t h might e l i c i t t h e p r o t e s t , "You moved it," o r t h e incredulous exclamation, "It moved?"--The p o i n t i s t h a t w e have overlooked something important i f w e t h i n k t h a t "move" has some common 'meaning' through a l l t h e c o n t e x t s i n which w e s a y , "You moved," " I ' v e moved it ," "It 's moving," and so on. when could it b e s a i d thatashadow h a s moved? Well, t h a t depends on t h e pre- s e n t concern o r i n t e r e s t of t h e person who s a y s i t . The c h i l d watching t h e shadow on t h e s u n d i a l has one s o r t of concern, bu t i n o t h e r c o n t e x t s o u r concern may b e q u i t e d i f f e r e n t , so t h a t what t h e chnYd saw would n o t count as movement a t a l l . And what i s t h e concern of P l a t o ' s p r i s o n e r s w i t h t h e shadows on t h e w a l l b e f o r e them? Well, they have none, e v i d e n t l y , and t h a t is t h e problem. That i s why w e cannot r e p r e s e n t them as saying anything i f a l l w e can do i s PLT 'words' i n t h e i r mouths, Taken a l o n e , a p a r t from any c o n t e x t , t h e wcrds "Zt's moving" come t o noth ing .

But i f a f o o t b a l l

So

So t h e Lockean p i c t u r e falls a p a r t under c a r e f u l s c r u t i n y It i s f raught wi th a l l manner of d i € f i c u l t i e s . And i f w e now recal l t h a t Whorf's no t ion of word-class meanings w a s s imply g r a f t e d onto t h a t p i c t u r e , w e w i l l see t h a t h i s l i n g u i s t i c r e l a t i v i s m is f r a u g h t wi th a l l t h e s e same d i f f i - c u l t i e s , i n a d d i t i o n t o those w e took n o t i c e of i n t h e preceeding s e c t i o n s .

V I I I

We are now i n a p c s i t i o n K O examine what 1s perhaps t h e fundamental assumption of Whocf's r e l a t i v i s m , namely, t h e i d e a t h a t language ( o r grammar) ought t o 'mesh wich' or ' m i r r o r ' t h e o n t o l o g i c a l s t r ~ ~ c ~ r e cf r h e world o r t h e Unlverse or r e a l i t y . We can do t h i s b e s t by ccnsldezxng sne of h i s examples, and t h e cne which w i l l b e s t s e r v e DUX purpcss h e r e i s h i s comparison c f Engl i sh ar'd H c p i wi th regard t o t h e s i n g u l a r - p l u r a l d i s t l n c t i o n i n grammar

25


Whorf e x p l a i n s t h e metaphysical s i g n i f i c a n c e of t h i s d i s t i n c t i o n as fo l lows: "A ca teogry such as number ( s i n g u l a r vs . p l u r a l ) i s a n at tempted i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of a whole l a r g e o r d e r of experience, v i r t u a l l y of t h e world o r of n a t u r e ; i t a t tempts t o s a y how exper ience i s t o b e segmented, what exper ience i s t o b e c a l l e d 'one ' and what ' s e v e r a l ' " (137). He goes on t o say t h a t what i s p l u r a l i n one language may b e s i n g u l a r i n another (138) , and among h i s examples of t h i s i s t h e fol lowing:

. . . w e a l l , unknowingly, p r o j e c t t h e l i n g u i s t i c r e l a t i o n s h i p s of a p a r t i c u l a r language upon t h e u n i v e r s e and SEE them t h e r e . . . . W e say 'see t h a t wave'--the same p a t t e r n as 'see t h a t house. ' But without t h e p r o j e c t i o n of language no one e v e r s a w a s i n g l e wave. We see a s u r f a c e i n everchanging undula t ing motions. Some languages cannot say 'a wave'; they are c l o s e r t o r e a l i t y i n t h i s r e s p e c t . Hopi s a y w a l a l a t a , ' p l u r a l waving o c c u r s , ' and can ca l l a t t e n t i o n t o one p l a c e i n t h e waving j u s t as w e can. But, s i n c e a c t u a l l y a wave cannot e x i s t by i t s e l f , t h e form t h a t corresponds t o o u r s i n g u l a r , wala , i s n o t t h e equiva- l e n t of Engl ish 'a wave,' b u t means 'a s l o s h occurs , ' as when a v e s s e l of l i q u i d i s suddenly j a r r e d . (262)

What Whorf i s saying h e r e about Hopi i s n o t a l t o g e t h e r clear. means t h a t t h e Hopi word i s a verb r a t h e r l i k e our "undulate" b u t t h a t i t has no noun d e r i v a t i v e w i t h a s i n g u l a r form analogous t o "an undulat ion." (Elsewhere h e te l ls us t h a t " i n t h e Hopi language, ' l i g h t n i n g , wave, . . .' are verbs" c2151 .) It i s what he says about Engl ish t h a t I f i n d puzzl ing. H e te l ls us t h a t because w e can form t h e s i n g u l a r "a wave," Engl ish i s n o t as "c lose t o r e a l i t y " as some o t h e r languages which "cannot s a y 'a wave'." H i s j u s t i f i c a t i o n f o r t h i s d i sparaging of Engl i sh seems t o b e g iven when he says t h a t "no one e v e r s a w a s i n g l e wave, one o b j e c t i o n t h a t may occur t o us h e r e i s t h a t Whorf i s s imply mistaken, f o r a s i n g l e wave can occur , as i n t h e case of a t i d a l wave on a n o therwise p l a c i d sea. But t h i s would b e an uninterest ing-- indeed, a misguided--ob- j e c t i o n . For had t h e example of such a t i d a l wave been called t o Whorf's a t t e n t i o n , he might poss ib ly have accepted t h i s as a sound cr i t ic ism and then have concluded t h a t i n t h i s r e s p e c t i t i s Engl i sh , no t Hopi, t h a t i s c l o s e r t o r e a l i t y . So t h i s c r i t i c i sm would l e a v e untouched Whorf's views about t h e r e l a t i o n of language, thought , and r e a l i t y , But t h e r e i s another observa t ion t o b e made h e r e about Whorf's reasoning.

Presumably h e

But t h i s i s n o t what concerns m e here .

We see a s u r f a c e i n everchanging undula t ing motions." Now

Whorf does not n o t i c e a t a l l t h e contex t and p o i n t of what people s a y when they speak of a wave. t h e beach i s cry ing , and w e t e l l him, "He w a s knocked down by a wave and i t f r i g h t e n e d him." O r we e x p l a i n how a boat w a s caps ized , say ing , "A l a r g e wave caught i t broadside." c a l l y , "I should have seen t h a t wave; I wasn ' t watching." Again, w e might warn someone, say ing , "You had b e t t e r l a s h down t h a t b a r r e l ; a l a r g e wave could wash i t overboard." Now people who are g iv ing such warnings, explana- t i o n s , and so on can h a r d l y be s a i d t o b e "descrfbfng t h e universe ." So what are w e t o make of Whorf's claim t h a t i n our use of "a wave" we are "pro jec t ing" something onto t h e universe o r , as h e p u t s i t i n t h e ear l ier passage, g iv ing "an i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of whole o r d e r of exper ience , v i r t u a l l y of t h e world o r of nature"?

For i n s t a n c e , someone a s k s why a l i t t l e boy along

And t h e s k i p p e r of t h e boa t might s a y apologet i -

26

JOHN W , COOK

What h a s happened h e r e , s u r e l y , i s t h a t Whorf is t r y i n g t o t h i n k about t h e d i f f e r e n c e between Hopi and Engl i sh as though t h e r e were no such t h i n g s as warnings and e x p l a n a t i o n s of t h e s o r t I have i l l u s t r a t e d above, as though t h e r e were no c o n t e x t o r p o i n t t o speaking , except f o r one which h e ca l l s " d e s c r i b i n g the universe" (217) o r " r e p o r t i n g experience" (58) a And i f w e now a s k what t h i s s o r t of d e s c r i b i n g Q P r e p o r t i n g is, o r what a good descr ip- t i o n o r an a c c u r a t e r e p o r t of t h i s kind would b e l i k e , w e have t o answer somewhat as fo l lows: Whorf i s j u s t t h i n k i n g of what t h e sea looks l i k e on a windy day ("We see a s u r f a c e i n everchanging undula t ing motions") and of what one m-ight s a y ff one wanted t o d e s c r i b e such a seascape . H e i s f o r - g e t t i n g t h a t t h i s i s j u s t one sort of i n t e r e s t o r concern w e have w i t h t h e sea. I t is t h e s o r t of i n t e r e s t one would have i f one were s i t t i n g on a c l i f f overlooking a stormy sea, d e s c r i b i n g t h e scene i n a l e t t e r t o a f r i e n d . I n such a e a s e one might have no occas ion t o speak of some p a r t i c u l a r wave. But Whorf f a i l s t o see t h e m a t t e r i n this l i g h t and t h u s p u t s t o himself t h e q u e s t i o n : How does t h e s i n g u l a r form "a wave" f i t o r m i r r o r t h i s , t h i s s u r f a c e i n everchanging undula t ing motions? And f f n d i n g no answer, he concludes t h a t Engl i sh does n o t r e a l l y f i t r e a l i t y .

In o t h e r words, Whorf, i n t r y i n g t o d i s c o v e r t h e ' r e a l i t y ' t o which t h e word "wave" corresponds, has u n w i t t i n g l y s e t t l e d on one s o r t of c o n t e x t , i n which w e would speak of waves b u t n o t of a wave, and a l l o t h e r c o n t e x t s are b l o t t e d from h i s mind. A s a r e s u l t , h e does n o t t h i n k of t h i s one s o r t o f contex t as be ing a contex t a t a l l , b u t t h i n k s of i t , r a t h e r , as though i t were somehow the d e s c r i p t i o n or the proper u s e of a word o r the t r u e per- s p e c t i v e from which t o speak. And i t is t h i s f a i l u r e t o recognize c o n t e x t s t h a t g i v e s Whorf h i s n o t i o n of "descr ib ing t h e universe" o r " r e p o r t i n g experience" o r "analyzing r e a l i t y . " meaning; they are b u t a symptom of Whorf's n e g l e c t of t h e c o n t e x t and p o i n t of what people say. Hie n o t i o n of " d e s c r i b i n g t h e universe" o r " r e p o r t i n g experience" r e s u l t s frcm h i s t r e a t i n g mere sentences as though they ( o r t h e i r 'meanings, ' i n c l u d i n g word-class meanings) could say something, as i f t h e y could speak from t h e pages of a grammar book, where no o m , n a f l e s h and blood human being i n some c o n t e x t , i s g i v i n g a warning, r e p o r t i n g an a c c i d e n t , e x p l a i n i n g how something works, o r anything else of t h e s o r t , o r ' 'experience' ' i s an i l 1 u s i o n born of c h a t p e c u l i a r way of th inking of sen tences o r language.

These phrases have not been g iven a

I n s h o r t , Whcsrf's n o t i o n of " r e a l i t y " o r " the universe"

Ihis l a s t p o i n t enables us t i recognize a fundamental d i f f i c u l t y i n Whorf's k i n g b i s t i e r e l a t i v i s m , His t h e s i s i s t h a t languages d i f f e r i n t h e ways i n which they " r e p c r t experience" or "descr ibe t h e universe" o r "analyze r e a l i t y . " We cculd t h i n k t h a t w e understood c h i s only -if w e supposed c h a t Whorf had g iven a meaning t o t h e s e s e v e r a l p h r a s e s . But w e can now see t h a t he h a s n o t done so I t h i n k I have shown cha t w e can underscand w e l l enough t h e i l l u s i o n t h a t rhese phrases mean something, bu t i f I am r i g h t c h e r e i s n c t h i n g b u t i l l u s i c n here . So i n t h e end w e are forced t o ccnclude tha t Whcrf's t h e s i s i s not f a l s e b u t u n i n t e l l i g i b l e . There i s nc sense to t h e i d e a t h a t a kanguags e i t h e r ' f i t s ' o r f a i l s t o ' f i t ' r e a l i t y o r t h e u n i v e r s e , There 1s no such t h i n g , cou ld b e no such t h i n g , as what Whorf (a long w:th c t h e r ph i lcsophers ) t h i n k s o f a s ' r e a l i t y ' sr ' t h e cniveree . ' This , t c c , is a grammatical

27


IX

At the beginning of this essay I said that I would be concerned with the question of how Whorfvs linguistic relativism is to be evaluated--whether by empirical research or by some other means, We now have an answer to that question. thesis, It is therefore not a subject for further empirical studies by linguists, anthropologists, or psychologists. And to the extent that prac- tioners of these empirical disciplines have undertaken to verify Whorf's thesis , they have either misunderstood Whorf and verified somethfng else ,53 or they have demonstrated once again the truth of what Wittgenstein was saying when he wrote that "in psychology there are experimental methods and conceptual confusion. "54

We have seen that his linguistic relativism is not an intelligible

The conceptual confusion I refer to would come in if someone were to propose to decide by experimental means whether, as Whorf thought, languages have different word-class meanings which impose different metaphysical world views on all who speak those languages, As we have seen, the notion of word- class meanings is incoherent, and therefore there can be no genuine empirical question of whether our thinking is determined by such meanings.--I know of no purported experiments which involve this conceptual confusion, but at least one psychologist regards the matter as a subject for empirical inquiry. John Carroll, in his book Language and Thought, writes: "There have been a s y e t no convincing demonstrations that languages impose different philosophical orientations "55

There is, on the other hand, a very different and entirely legitimate question about the explicit philosophizing of philosophers and its relation to languages of very different grammatical structure, matter, Professor Paul Friedrich has remarked: ". . a a great deal of philosophy, especfally in its fncipient stages, is a case of people asking what the words mean and especially what grammatical categories, ending, and connecting particles mean, a The problem is that while in linguistics we have rather elegant treatments of the obligatory grammatical categories in Ameracan Indian languages, I don't know of any systematic analysis of the ontology and metaphysics of an American Indian philosophical system, and until we get some of those I don't see how we can do much correlating and relationship, physician, if there is such an animal, and in the process of reasoning with him see how he bases his arguments on and to what extent he actually ap- peals to categorfes in the language, because I think he would appeal to them very oftenot'56

Regarding this

It would be of course ideal to talk to a Navajo meta-

I do not regard these remarks as a conceptual confusion. On the contrary, they are an insightful comment on the nature of philosophizing. In saying this, I am, of course, agreeing, as Professor Friedrich evidently would, with Wittgenstein's observation that the explicit philosophizfng of a Plato or a Bergson consists of confusions one falls into as the result of misconstruing the forms of one's language.57 This is altogether different from Whorf's view that grammatical categories are functional (meaning) categories, Indeed, one could say that on Wittgenstein's view, philosophizing consists to a large extent of mistakenly treating grammatical categDries as though they were functional.58

28

JOHN W. COOK

X

There is one final question that demands an answer: Are the differences among languages really as great as Whorf and Sapir claim? Up to this point I have proceeded as though we need not raise this question, as though we could trust Whorf and Sapir to have their facts straight in reporting the grammatical differences among languages. After all, there would seem to be no reason for philosophers to kibitz when Sapir tells us that in many languages color words are verbs and not adjectives, or when Whorf tells us that many English nouns translate into Hopi verbs. (If this takes us by surprise, we need only recall that even within English some nouns can be replaced by verbs: dined.") as this? I think not,

we can say either "I have had dinner" or "I have already But are all their claims about grammatical difference as unproblematic

There are two kinds of cases to be considered here: those which could be decided only by someone with a linguist's expertise in the language in question and those which can be decided by philosophical investigation. I will say something briefly about one example of the former kind and will then go on to discuss in more detail several examples of the latter kind.

Whorf tells us that in such languages as Nitinat and Nootka the noun- verb distinction "seems not to exist" ( 9 9 ) . He does not mean by this that these languages are like Arabic, a language in which all or most of the major words are lfke the English words "head," "hand , I 1 "walk ,'I "surrender"--words which (unlike "guitar") can be identified as a noun or a verb only in the context of a sentence. He means, rather, that even in complex sentences of these languages there is nothing at all that would justify us in declaring words to be nouns or to be verbs. The justification he gives for this claim is that every major word in these languages can serve by itself as a de- clarative sentence and can take on "such moduli as voice, aspect, and tense without the addition of a preparatory modulus" (981, and compound sentences in these languages are simply made up of a series of such "predicative lexemes" ( 9 9 ) , all of them being of the same type, so that it never occurs that one of the lexemes in the sentence is playing the noun role to some other word's verb role or vice versa,

Such fs Whorf's account, and much that he says here is true, But if one follows Sapir's account of the same matter, one arrfves at a different conclusion, Sapir points out that the Nootka radical element inikw- is "really as much of a verbal as of a nominal term; it may be rendered now by 'fire,' now by 'burn,' according to the syntactic exigencies of the sentence," And if we now affix the element -ihl (meaning "in the house") thfs does not change matters: "inikw-ihl is still 'fire in the house' or 'burn in the house'." Moreover, it can be pluralized without making it a noun, and tense can be added without making it a verb,--So far this is %n agreement with Whorf. But Sapir also tells us this:

It may be definitely nominalized or verbalized by the affixing of elements that are exclusively nominal or verbal in force. For example, inikw-ihl-'i, with its suffixed article, is a clear-cut nominal form: "the burning in the house, the fire in the house"; inikw-ihl-ma, with its indica- tive suffix, is just as clearly verbal: house " 5 9

"it burns in the

29


It thus appears t h a t Whorf has simply omitted from h i s account c e r t a i n facts about Nootka and has thus made i t appear more r ad ica l ly d i f f e r e n t from o the r languages than it r e a l l y is .

I n cases of t h i s s o r t a philosopher i s dependent upon l i n g u i s t s t o provide the necessary cor rec t ive .60 I mentioned above, cases i n which the philosopher may co r rec t t h e l i n g u i s t .

Consider, f o r example, S a p i r ' s claim t h a t whereas English requi res us t o

But t h e r e are a l s o cases of t he o ther s o r t

use t h e present t ense i n "Two p lus two is four," t he re are o the r languages t h a t have a "general" t ense f o r use i n such cases. (Sap i r ' s semantic i n t e r - p re t a t ion , as you w i l l r e c a l l , i s t h a t when using t h e present tense i n cases of t h i s kind w e "have t o pretend t h a t t h e present moment may be elongated f o r e and a f t s o as t o take i n a l l e t e rn i ty . " ) i n t h i s case? Is "Two p lus two is (or equals) four" r e a l l y i n the present tense? It is not , of course, pas t o r fu tu re tense, bu t should w e conclude from t h a t t h a t it must then be i n the present tense? Why not say, i n s t ead , t h a t i t i s a t ense l e s s statement? Af te r a l l , "is" here is doing duty f o r t he a r i t h - met ica l s ign of equa l i ty , and do we r e a l l y want t o say t h a t %=" is present tense? I f no t , then why should we say t h a t ''is" (or "equals") here is a tensed verb? The only reason f o r saying s o is t h e s u p e r f i c i a l resemblance of ''is" and "equals" here with present t ense verb forms i n o the r sentences. But i s the re any reason why w e should l e t ourselves be guided, as Sapi r obviously w a s , by t h i s resemblance7 I should th ink no t , f o r t he re are, a f t e r a l l , o ther considerations t o be guided by here. There i s , as I have sa i i , t he f a c t t h a t "ist' and "equalsf' are here doing duty f o r "=", which bears no mark of t h e present tense . But more important is the f a c t t h a t no one ever says , "By tomorrow two p lus two will be four" o r "Las t Wednesday two p lus two was four," and of course no one says , "Since Monday two plus two has been four" o r even "For as long a s anyone can remember two p lus two has been four." should we th ink (as I suppose Sapir w a s thinking) t h a t "Two p lus two is four" means "At p resent two p lus two i s four"?--I th ink we can only conclude t h a t Sapir does not have h i s f a c t s s t r a i g h t i n t h i s case and t h a t what he presents a s grammatical f a c t i s r e a l l y grammatical f i c t i o n .

Now does Sapi r have h i s facts s t r a i g h t

So why

This may lead us t o suspect t h a t Whorf, too, i s sometimes g u i l t y of philosophical misrepresentations i n h i s accounts of the grammatical d i f f e r - ences among languages. Indeed, t h i s i s what we should expect, given w h a t w e already know about h i s views on granunar and metaphysics. A s we observed a t the end of Section V I , it w a s q u i t e impossible f o r him t o see t h e grammar of an exo t i c language as being merely another s t y l e of grammar, f o r he approached each language with the conviction t h a t i f i ts grammar is found t o be sub- s t a n t i a l l y d i f f e r e n t from t h a t of English, then it must harbor a d i f f e r e n t metaphysics. It is therefore most l i k e l y t h a t when he r epor t s h i s comparison of two languages, h i s account w i l l be loaded i n favor of emphasizing t h e imagined metaphysical d i f fe rences and w i l l f a i l t o show us ( a s a proper comparison ought to ) how, desp i t e t he s u p e r f i c i a l d i f fe rences of "surface grammar," the two languages are a l i k e i n t h e i r "depth grammar."61 is, i n f a c t , p rec i se ly what we f ind i n h i s comparison of English and Hopi tenses , as I w i l l now undertake t o show.

And t h i s

What I want t o show is t h a t Whorf, by t r e a t i n g the su r face grammar of English as func t iona l , reads i n t o English a metaphysical p i c t u r e of t i m e which i s not t he re a t a l l , and having done t h i s , he then th inks t h a t he is

30

JOHN W. COOK

entitled to argue that because Hopi does not lend itself to the same metaphysical interpretation as English, we must conclude that Hopi, unlike English, "makes no reference to time." In other words, he allows his metaphysical interpretations of'the two languages to dictate what shall and what shall not be counted as a grammatical similarity, This, then, raises the question for us: What similarities would we find if we were to throw out the metaphysical interpretations? alleges them to be?

Would the two languages then look as different to us as Whorf

Let us begin by consfdering what Whorf has to say in this connection about Hopi. It would, of course, be quite astonishing--and hardly believable--were he to tell us that when one is translating a warning or a prediction or a story from Hopi into English there is nothing at all in the Hopi version which shows us whether the English translation should be in the past, present, or future tense. And indeed Whorf does not tell us that. He explains in some detail (58-63, 103-110, 113-115) the various overt and covert features of Hopi verbs which, as he puts it, "translate, more or less, the English tenses" (113), There is, as it turns out, no easy match up of the English and Hopi forms, for our three tenses translate into only two Hopi forms, which Whorf calls the "inceptive" (or "reportive") and the "expective .It English past tense and most present tense statements go into the inceptive, while some present tense (those in which the main verb is "begins to" or "is going toll) and all future tense statements go into the expective. I will make no attempt here to summarize Whorf's account of these matters, for it would be somewhat tedions, and I am not at all confident that I could disentangle the purely grammatical information from the metaphysical interpretation in which Whorf serves it up to us. It turns out, in any case, that for our purposes it is not essential to understand the Hopi verb forms. Whorf's claim about the difference between Hopi and English is that Hopi "makes no reference to time." He is assuming, of course, that English does make reference to time, and by this he means that in English we must use the past, present, and future tenses and that the function of these verb forms is to assign states and events to one or another segment of the flowing continuum called "time." So in order to test Whorf's claim about the difference between Hopi and English, we need only condider whether it is true that this is what is involved in the use of English tenses.

Where does Whorf get this idea? Certainly not from paying attention to verb forms themselves. The mere fact that English verbs take such forms as "play" and "played" or "did, "doing," and "will do" suggests nothing metaphysical, suggests nothing about a 'flowing continuum.' Is it, then, in the use of these forms that we are supposed to see metaphysics coming in? Well, how does a child come to acquire the use of them? Certainly not by being told a metaphysical story about some flowing continuurn. The child, with suitable encouragement, simply picks up the use of these verb forms from the way his elders talk to him--just as he picks up the use of, say, the passive voice. And how do they talk to the child? I suppose they say such things as this: "Did you like that, Johnny?" "Shall we do it again?" "We will dc it agatn tomorrow.'' And also such things as this: "Run, run. - . . Suzie ran all the way to the tree! In order to emulate such tense changes, the child need not first know the word "time" or the words rlpast," "present," and "future." Indeed, it is most unlikely that the child would come to know these words first. But in any case they have no relevance here, When, during play, Suzie's father

Now Daddy wfll run. You catch me."

31


exclaims, "Suzfe ran a l l the way t o the tree," he is not t o be thought of as saying, "In the past Suzie r an a l l t he way t o the tree." And when he then says , "Now Daddy w i l l run," t h i s is no t l i k e someone's saying, "In the fu tu re Daddy w i l l run." The phrases "in the past" and " in the fu ture" do not f i t i n with each and every use of t he pas t and fu tu re tenses. If someone were t o say t o Suzie, "In the f u t u r e Daddy w i l l run," t h a t would su re ly be i n some such case as t h a t i n which he r f a t h e r had broken a l e g o r i n ju red h i s back, and now someone is reassur ing Suzie t h a t he r f a t h e r w i l l mend and be ab le t o play with her aga in someday. S imi la r ly , i t w i l l c e r t a i n l y not do f o r Whorf t o i n s i s t t h a t Suz ie ' s f a t h e r is t a lk ing about t he pas t when, i n the midst of t h e i r p lay , he exclaims, "Suzie r an a l l t he way t o the tree!" To i n s i s t t h a t he r f a t h e r is saying t h a t i n the pas t Suzie ran a l l the way t o t h e tree sug- g e s t s t h a t he is lamenting over h i s daughter 's f a i l i n g hea l th , lamenting t h a t she can no longer do what she could do i n the pas t .

The poin t is t h a t "past," "present," and "future" are no t used a t a l l as philosophers imagine. We even use "present" t o encompass wha.t w e speak of i n the pas t and f u t u r e tenses, as when we say, "At p resent she i s n ' t speaking t o me; when I m e t her t h i s morning, s h e d idn ' t even say he l lo , " o r "At present he is assigned t o t h e White House; he w i l l f l y t o Moscow wi th the Pres ident tomorrow."--So i t would not be t r u e t o say tha t the pas t t ense ass igns th ings t o the pas t and the f u t u r e t ense ass igns th ings t o the fu ture .

A t t h i s point someone may want t o suggest t h a t Whorf was, using "past," "present," and "future" i n a s p e c i a l ph i losophica l way and -that i n t h i s s p e c i a l sense of these words the re is some poin t i n t i m e such t h a t whatever occurred p r i o r t o i t is pas t and some poin t i n t i m e such that. whatever w i l l occur a f t e r i t is i n t he fu tu re , and t h a t t he present overlaps wi th ne i the r . But w i l l t h i s suggestion r e a l l y be of any he lp t o Whorf? claim he is making is about English tenses , so i f w e are t o t.ake him t o be claiming t h a t our tenses f i t i n with t h i s philosophical scheme of pas t , p resent , and fu ture , then we must consider whether our tenses r e a l l y work t h a t way, We use the present tense when w e say "Jack l i v e s wi th Jill" and a l s o use the present tense when a race t r ack announcer says, "Sterrball wins by a nose!" Now i f Stewball wins h i s race while Jack is l i v i n g with J i l l , how w i l l t h a t philosophical use of "past ,It "present ," and "future" a l i g n with out Censes? A moment before Stewball wins by a nose, someone! may assure us, "Stewball w i l l win" ( fu tu re t ense ) , and a moment a f t e r he c rosses the f i n i s h l i n e someone may exclaim, "Stewball won!" (past t ense) . Now i f w e a l i g n the phi losophica l use of "past" and "future" with the pas t and present tenses here , then how a r e w e t o t a l k about Jack and J i l l ? Their l i v i n g together could not have begun and ended as Stewball crossed the f i n i s h l i n e , so obviously w e cannot match up "Jack w i l l l i v e w i t h J i l l" wi th "Stewball w i l l win" and match up "Jack l ived with Jill" with "Stewball won!" suggestion w e a r e here considering requi res t h a t t h e r e be such a match up.-- The poin t i s t h a t the tenses of the verbs "win" and " l ive with" function d i f f e r e n t l y , so i f we a l i g n our phi losophica l use of "past ," "present," and "future" with one of these verbs , w e cannot do so with the o ther . Whorf's pos i t i on is i n no way a s s i s t e d by introducing t h i s ph i losophica l terminology. Indeed, t he re seems t o be no way t o save h i s pos i t i on from col laps ing ,

After a l l , t he

And ye t the

So

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JOHN W. COOK

How did Whorf get into this position? He did so, very likely, in the way we all do, by asking "What is time?" and assuming that the question is about some entity or stuff called "time." "time" is a noun, it must be that kind of word, various idioms in which that word occurs, such as 'la long time passed," "his time will come," and many others, he took this to show that we think of time as being like a stream. A s we saw in Section VI, there is no reason to think that all nouns have a common noun- meaning, to think that whenever we use a noun we are, necessarily, speaking of some thing (or stuff). And also there is no reason to treat idioms as a guide to how we think of or conceive something. We say, "Wipe that smile off your face," but no one who tells us this means that there is something on our face like a smudge of soot which we are to wipe away.

Whorf no doubt assumed that, because And when he then noticed

But both of these moves are misguided.

The fact is that the word "time" is not used at all as the word "water" or "stream" is used. Whorf's idea seems to be that the past tense means something analogous to "downstream," that the future tense means something analogous to "upstream," and that "time" is the name of the stream or of the stuff that flows in the streambed, But if this were so, then of course children would have to learn tenses in a way analogous to learning about upstream and downstream, and in learning the word "time" they would have to learn something analogous to learning about the current of a river. But clearly enough nothing like this takes place. To teach a child "upstream" and "downstream" you would first take him to a stream, or perhaps show him a picture of one, and then demonstrate or tell him about the current. You might throw a chip on the water so that he could see it being carried away, or you might tell him to put his foot in the water so that he could feel the water flowing past, the use of tenses or the word "time." child about some "flowing contfnuum." if we wanted to, for there is really no analogy here at all.

But nothing like this precedes a child's picking up We do not first show or explain to a We would not even know how to do so

What are we to conclude from all this? I think we can now say that whereas Whorf thought that he was reading off from the grammar of English a metaphysics which is contained therein, he was in fact reading into our grammar a metaphysics which is not there at all. And this being so, we no longer have any reason to think that Hopi differs from English in the way Whorf tells us it does.

It would, of course, be useful if we could now turn our attention to the Hopi language and in the same way show that Whorf's metaphysical interpretation of it is also unfounded, but as I do not speak Hopi, this is out of the question. Still one may be pardoned for assuming that if Whorf could give a faulty account of his own language, a language whose usage he was familiar with but which he neglected while attending to its surface grammar, then he was certainly capable also of giving a similarly faulty account of Hopi. Indeed, in the latter case there were even greater inducements for Whorf to read into the language a metaphysics that is not there at all. For he learned this language, not by living with the Hopi, but by submitting sample sentences to an informant who then gave him translations (112). So if Wittgenstein was right when he said that philosophical ideas arise "when language is Idling, not when it is doing work,"62 then since these sample sentences were certainly "idling,!' it was well nigh inwitable that Whorf, with his metaphysical propensities, should have read metaphysics into them.

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Moreover, if my arguments of the preceding sections have been sound, then Whorf was mistaken in thinking that grammatical forms have 'semantic' meaning, and in that case we have no reason to believe that a metaphysics could be implicit in Hopi grammar.

718 MISSION CANYON ROAD SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA 93105

NOTES

29. John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 111, ii, 1.

30. I b i d . , 11, xi, 8.

31. "The meanings of words being only the ideas they are made to stand for by him that uses them. . . ." ( I b i d . , 111, iv, 6.)

32. I b i d . , 11, xii, 2.

33. This important aspect of Whorf's thinking is generally neglected in the critical literature on linguistic relativism. An except:Lon is Keith Percival's essay, "A reconsideratinn of Whorf ' s Hypothes:Ls," Anthropological L i n g u i s t i c s , Vol. 8, No. 8 (1966), pp. 1-12. For an interesting historical account of the distinguishing of word classes and the philosophical origin of some of these distinctions, see Roland Hall, "Parts of Speech, " Proceedings of t h e A r i s t o t e l i a n S o c i e t y , Supplementary Volume, 1965, pp. 173-188.

Some present-day linguists who question Whorf's relativism seem tempted to embrace the view he was opposing. See, for example, Robert Longacre's untitled review of Four Articles on M e t a l i n g u i s t i c s , an early collection of essays by Whorf, in Language Vol. 32 (19561, pp. 298-708. challenged the grounds for Whorf's claim that some languinges do not have a noun-verb dichotomy, Longacre asks rhetorically: "How do we know that there is not some sort of segmentation in the nature of things, so that 'things' vs. 'events' is not an entirely unjustified dichotomy after all?" (p. 304).

34.

Having

34

JOHN W. COOK

35

36.

37.

38.

39.

40.

41.

42.

43.

44.

45 .

46.

That Whorf reasoned in this fashion is shown most clearly in his remark, regarding a certain category which he claims to find in English, that it ''is not unmistakably given by experience prior to language, or it would be found in all languages, and it is not" (139).

Max Black, "Linguistic Relativity: The Views of Benjamin Lee Whorf," O P . C i t . , p. 232.

Edward Sapir, Language (New York: Harcourt, 1921), p. 96.

Sapir at one point makes a half-hearted qualification of this idea. Alluding to the fact that in his conceptual translations he includes even such things as gender, he remarks that he has "exaggerated somewhat." clear sex notion in his mind when he speaks of un arbre ("a-masculine tree") or of une ponmre ("a-feminine apple")." I b i d . , p. 97.--One is led to wonder, of course, how Sapir managed to distinguish between what is and what is not thus "exaggerated" in his conceptual translations.

"It goes without saying," he adds, "that a Frenchman has no

I b i d . , p. 117.

I b i d . , pp. 117-118.

I b i d . , p. 99.

I b i d . , p. 118.

I b i d . , pp. 118-119.

Reprinted in The S e l e c t e d W r i t i n g s of O t t o J e s p e r s e n (London: George Allen and Unwin, n.d.), pp. 531-532.

Whorf's view is very close to that of those contemporary philosophers who advocate the construction of an 'ideal language' as a way of getting around the faulty metaphysical implications of English. Irving Copi, an advocate of that view, writes: 'I. . . an imperfect language will have a misleading structure which will render unsound any inferences drawn from i t s structure to the structure of the world. . . . The essence of an 'ideal' language . . . is that its logical structure 'corresponds with' or 'mirrors' in some sense the ontological structure of fact. Hence a language can be known to be 'ideal' only by comparing its logical structure with the ontological structure of the world, which must be known independently if the comparison is to be significant." "Language Analysis and Metaphysical Inquiry," reprinted in Richard Rorty, ed., The L i n g u i s t i c Turn (Chicago: University Press, 1975), pp. 130-131.

Jespersen was pointing this out when he wrote: "Some would say that substantives denote things and what are conceived as things, and they would maintain that the difference between say p r i d e and proud , ad - m i r a t i o n and admire is that the former word in each pair is thought of as a thing. But surely an ordinary mind has no such feeling when speaking of a woman's pride or of our admiration for the great poets--the

35


d e f i n i t i o n r e a l l y amounts t o say ing t h a t p r i d e and admira t ion are t r e a t e d grannnatically i n t h e same way as names of t h i n g s l i k e peiarls and trees, and t h e d e f i n i t i o n t h u s is noth ing b u t a circulus vitiosiis.ll Op. C i t . , pp. 491-492.

47. S a p i r , on t h e o t h e r hand, came s u r p r i s i n g l y c l o s e t o drawing t h e con- c l u s i o n t h a t metaphysics i s noth ing b u t grammatical fict:Lons. "There is no doubt," h e wrote , " t h a t t h e c r i t i ca l s tudy of language may a l s o b e of t h e most c u r i o u s and unexpected h e l p f u l n e s s t o phi:losophy. Few phi losophers have deigned t o look i n t o t h e morphologies of p r i m i t i v e languages nor have t h e y g iven t h e s t r u c t u r a l p e c u l i a r i t i e s of t h e i r own language more t h a n a pass ing and per func tory a t t e n t i o n . t h e r i d d l e of t h e universe on h i s hands, such p u r s u i t s s e e m t r i v i a l enough, y e t when i t begins t o b e suspec ted t h a t a t least some s o l u t i o n s of t h e g r e a t r i d d l e are e l a b o r a t e l y roundabout a p p l i c a t i o n s of t h e r u l e s of L a t i n o r German o r Engl i sh grammar, t h e t r i v i a l i t y of l i n g u i s t i c a n a l y s i s becomes less c e r t a i n . sopher h a s r e a l i z e d , he is l i k e l y t o become t h e dupe of h i s speech-forms, which i s e q u i v a l e n t t o say ing t h a t t h e mould of h i s thougght, which i s t y p i c a l l y a l i n g u i s t i c mould, i s a p t t o b e p r o j e c t e d i n t o h i s concept ion of t h e world. Thus innocent l i n g u i s t i c c a t e g o r i e s may t a k e on t h e formidable appearance of cosmic a b s o l u t e s . I f on ly , t h e r e f o r e , t o save himself from phi losophic verba l i sm, i t would b e w e l l f o r t h e phi losopher t o look c r i t i c a l l y t o t h e l i n g u i s t i c foundat ions and l imf t ta t ions of h i s thought . H e would then be spared t h e h u m i l i a t i n g d iscovery t h a t many new i d e a s , many apparent ly b r i l l i a n t ph i losophic concept:tons, are l i t t l e more than rearrangements of f a m i l i a r words i n formal ly s a t i s f y i n g p a t t e r n s . " (Edward S a p i r , The S e l e c t e d W r i t i n g s of Edward S a p i r , O p . C i t . , pp. 156-157.)

When one h a s

To a f a r g r e a t e r e x t e n t than t h e phi lo-

48. Ludwig Wit tgens te in , The Blue and Brown Books (Oxford, 1!)58), pp. 4-5.

49. Ludwig Wit tgens te in , P h i l o s o p h i c a l I n v e s t i g a t i o n s (New York: MacMillan, 19531, Sec. 23.

5 0 . The R e p u b l i c , Bk. VYI, t r a n s . , F. M. Cornford.

51. T h i s , i t seems t o m e , p a r t l y e x p l a i n s why some contemporary t h e o r i s t s , such as Fodor and Katz, p e r s i s t i n t a l k i n g about speaking ( o r language) i n ways t h a t make sense only when one i s t a l k i n g about something l i k e a d ip lomat ic communique. Diplomats, of course, seldom s a y q u i t e what they mean. They speak o b l i q u e l y , d i p l o m a t i c a l l y . And so one must read t h e i r communiques i n a q u i t e s p e c i a l way, b e a r i n g i n mind t h o s e t ac i t understandings t h a t have grown up between t h e d ip lomat ic corps of t h e v a r i o u s n a t i o n s . p r e t i n g a sentence o r a paragraph and t o speak of t h e cormunique as conveying such and such a message. But i f I say t o my daughter , as I r e t u r n from t h e mailbox, "Here i s a l e t t e r f o r you," s h e i s n o t i n t h e p o s i t i o n of having t o i n t e r p r e t a sen tence i n o r d e r to d i s c e r n some message I a m conveying t o h e r .

Here it makes sense t o speak of s tudying o r i n t e r -

52. But w a s Kant no t r i g h t , someone may now a s k , i n i n s i s t i n t : t h a t e x i s t e n c e i s not a real p r e d i c a t e , and i s n ' t i t t r u e t h a t Engl i sh grammar treats e x i s t e n c e as though i t were a real p r e d i c a t e , and doesn'i: t h a t show t h a t a language may f a i l t o f i t wi th rea l i ty?- -This i s o f t e n paraded as

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JOHN W. COOK

a prize example in support of the view that English needs reforming or that one job of philosophy is to construct an ideal language, a language whose grammatical structure 'mirrors' the ontological structure of the world. (See, for example, Copf's essay, "Language Analysis and Meta- physical Inquiry," Op. C i t . , p. 129.)--I cannot here undertake a discussion of the doctrine that existence is not a real predicate, but I happily refer the reader to Frank Ebersole's essay "Whether Existence is a Predicate" in his book Things W e Know (Eugene: University of Oregon Press, 1967), pp. 237-254. See also Jerome Shaffer, "Existence, Predication, and the Ontological Argument," Mind, July, 1962.

5 3 . An instance of this is a study by Eric Lenneberg and J. M. Roberts, which John Carroll describes as "one of the first to give strong support to linguistic-relativity hypothesis." (John Carroll, Language and Though t , Op. C i t . , p. 108.) Lenneberg and Roberts found that Zuni speakers could better recognize and remember those colors which are easily named in the Zuni language than they could those colors which are easily named in our English color vocabulary. But this study, although interesting, deals with a difference in vocabulary, not in grammar, and therefore does not deal with a difference in language as Whorf understands this. We can easily imagine an isolated group of people who spoke English but whose color vocabulary resembled that of Zuni rather than our own. Hence, the difference that Lenneberg and Roberts were concerned with could exist within a language. Their study, therefore, has no relevance to Whorf's linguistic relativism, and Professor Carroll, in citing their study, has simply revealed his misunderstanding of Whorf's thesis. deed, he seems to be making the very mistake that Sapir was warning against in this context when he wrote: "The linguistic student should never make the mistake of identifying a language with its dfctionary." (Language-, Op. C i t . , p. 219.)

In-

5 4 . P h i l o s o p h i c a l I n v e s t i g a t i o n s , Op. C i t . , p. 232.

5 5 . Op. C i t . , p. 109.

56. This was a discussion comment by Professor Friedrich and is recorded in S o c i o l i n g u i s t i c s , Op. C i t . , pp. 162-163.

Wittgenstein speaks of philosophical problems "arising through a misin- terpretation of our forms of language." ( P h i l o s o p h i c a l I n v e s t i g a t i o n s , Sec. 111.) about the nature of philosophy, I do not necessarily agree with his treatment of all of the philosophical problems that he discussed. example, I am inclined to think that his continued use of the philosophical terms "concept" and "proposition" shows that he did no t manage to free himself altogether of the philosophical ideas about language found in his T r a c t a t u s Log ico -Ph i losoph icus .

57.

While I find myself in agreement with Wittgenstein's view

For

58. Consider, for example, Wittgenstein's remark: "We are up against cLie of the great sources of philosophical bewilderment: a substantive makes us look for a thing that corresponds to it." Brown Books, Op. C i t . , p. 1.) And further on he writes: "When words in our . . l - 4 - n l i b - '-ator ' ic: a norin1 we are inclined to try to interpret

(The B l u e and

language have prima facie analogoua grammars ce.g.,

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WHORF'S LINOUtSTTC RELPTIVISM I1

them analogously; i .e . , w e t r y t o make the analogy hold throughout," so t h a t "when we are puzzled about t h e na tu re of t i m e , when t i m e seems t o us a queer t h i n g . . . it i s the use of t he subs tan t ive ' t i m e ' which mys t i f i e s us." ( I b i d . , p. 6.)

59. Language, Op. C i t . , pp. 133-134.

6 0 . This would not be t rue , of course, i f w e could assume as our poin t of departure t h a t a l l languages are pragmatically equivalent o r , i n Sap i r ' s phrase, formally complete ( see Section 11) . For i n t h a t case we could i n f e r t h a t even i n Nootka the re are ways of asking "Who d id i t? ' " and "What d id he do?" and thus ways of e l i c i t i n g the counter-parts of our subjec ts and predica tes . But then we cannot know a p r i o r i t h a t a l l languages are formally complete ( the re must have been a E8tage i n the development of languages when they w e r e comparatively rudimentary), and so when Whorf o r some o ther l i n g u i s t descr ibes a language i n a way t h a t seems t o imply t h a t i t i s no t formally complete, we cannot know a p r i o r i t h a t h i s desc r ip t ion i s incomplete o r inaccura te .

I have borrowed t h i s terminology from t h e following remarks by Wittgenstein: "In the use of words one might d i s t i ngu i sh ' sur face grammar' from 'depth grammar'. What immediately impresses i tself upon us about t h e use of a word i s t h e way it i s used i n t h e cons t ruc t ion of t h e sentence, t h e p a r t of i t s use--one might say--that: can be taken i n by the ear.--And now compare t h e depth grammar, say of t he word ' t o mean', with what i ts su r face grammar wouId lead us t o suspect. No wonder we f i nd i t d i f f i c u l t t o know our way about." I n v e s t i g a t i o n s , Op. C i t . , Sec. 6 6 4 . )

61.

I ~ h i l o s o p h i c a l

6 2 . I b i d . , Sec. 132.

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Whorf's Linguistic Relativism II -- John W Cook