Hopi (Hopi: Hopílavayi ) is a Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Hopi people (a Puebloan group) of northeastern Arizona , United States.
122-643: Hotevilla-Bacavi ( Hopi : Hotvela-Paaqavi ; also known as Third Mesa ) is a census-designated place (CDP) in Navajo County , Arizona , United States, on the Hopi Reservation . The population was 957 at the 2010 census . Hotevilla was first settled by the "hostiles", a group of Hopi residents who were forced out of nearby Oraibi in the 1906 Oraibi Split due to ideological differences over European cultural influences by recently arrived settlers, soldiers and missionaries, influences against which
244-454: A speech community speakers must use the linguistic categories of their shared language, which requires moulding experiences into the shape of language to speak them—a process called "thinking for speaking". This interpretation is supported by Whorf's subsequent statement that "No individual is free to describe nature with absolute impartiality, but is constrained by certain modes of interpretation even when he thinks himself most free". Similarly,
366-461: A / . Similarly to the velar stops, Hopi has a fronted dorsal nasal and a backed dorsal nasal represented as ⟨ngy⟩ and ⟨ng⟩ , respectively. The fronted nasal is palatal [ ɲ ] . The backed nasal is described as velar ŋ in Third Mesa speech and thus forms a "neutral" series with "neutral" k . In Mishongnovi speech, Whorf describes the backed nasal as having
488-771: A Tanoan language for over 300 years since the Arizona Tewa , who speak Tewa , moved from the Galisteo Basin following the Pueblo Revolt to reside on First Mesa. The Arizona Tewa have traditionally acted as translators for the Hopi-speaking Tewa, Hopi, Navajo, Spanish, and English. The Hopi had cursory contact with Spanish beginning with the explorers in 1540. In 1629 a small group of Franciscan missionaries started arriving in Hopi territory, building
610-507: A causal relation between grammatical or lexical structure and cognition or perception. Whorf himself did not advocate a straight causality between language and thought; instead he wrote that "Language and culture had grown up together"; that both were mutually shaped by the other. Hence, Lucy (1992a) has argued that because the aim of the formulation of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis was to test simple causation, it failed to test Whorf's ideas from
732-475: A central role among Sapir's students and was well respected. Sapir had a profound influence on Whorf's thinking. Sapir's earliest writings had espoused views of the relation between thought and language stemming from the Humboldtian tradition he acquired through Franz Boas , which regarded language as the historical embodiment of volksgeist , or ethnic world view. But Sapir had since become influenced by
854-828: A church the following year. They remained there until 1680 when the Pueblo Revolt occurred and the Hopi expelled the Spanish from the region. Both the practices of the Spanish when there, and the stories of negative experiences of Puebloan refugees from the Rio Grande region, contributed to a Hopi attitude where acculturation was resisted or rejected. A number of studies have focused on loanwords borrowed into Hopi from other languages. There are six basic vowels in Hopi: /ø/ descends from Proto-Uto-Aztecan *o, while Hopi /o/ descends from *u. Hopi dialects differ in their number of consonants. Below are two separate inventories of
976-765: A current of logical positivism , such as that of Bertrand Russell and the early Ludwig Wittgenstein , particularly through Ogden and Richards' The Meaning of Meaning , from which he adopted the view that natural language potentially obscures, rather than facilitates, the mind to perceive and describe the world as it really is. In this view, proper perception could only be accomplished through formal logics . During his stay at Yale, Whorf acquired this current of thought partly from Sapir and partly through his own readings of Russell and of Ogden and Richards. As Whorf became more influenced by positivist science, he also distanced himself from some approaches to language and meaning that he saw as lacking in rigor and insight. One of these
1098-510: A fire prevention engineer. During his time at Yale, Whorf worked on describing the Hopi language and made notable claims about its perception of time. He also conducted research on the Uto-Aztecan languages , publishing influential papers. In 1938, he substituted for Sapir, teaching a seminar on American Indian linguistics. Whorf's contributions extended beyond linguistic relativity; he wrote
1220-458: A given language perceive sounds that are acoustically different as the same, if the sound comes from the underlying phoneme and does not contribute to changes in semantic meaning. Furthermore, speakers of languages are attentive to sounds, particularly if the same two sounds come from different phonemes. Such differentiation is an example of how various observational frames of reference leads to different patterns of attention and perception. Whorf
1342-602: A grammar sketch of Hopi, studied Nahuatl dialects, proposed a deciphering of Maya hieroglyphic writing, and contributed to Uto-Aztecan reconstruction. After Whorf's premature death from cancer in 1941, his colleagues curated his manuscripts and promoted his ideas regarding language, culture, and cognition. However, in the 1960s, his views fell out of favor due to criticisms claiming his ideas were untestable and poorly formulated. In recent decades, interest in Whorf's work has resurged, with scholars reevaluating his ideas and engaging in
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#17327834718011464-662: A grant with the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) to support his research. Whorf considered using the money to travel to Mexico to procure Aztec manuscripts for the Watkinson library, but Tozzer suggested he spend the time in Mexico documenting modern Nahuatl dialects . In his application Whorf proposed to establish the oligosynthetic nature of the Nahuatl language. Before leaving Whorf presented
1586-493: A hypothesis that should be the basis for a program of empirical research. Hoijer also published studies of Indigenous languages and cultures of the American South West in which Whorf found correspondences between cultural patterns and linguistic ones. The term, even though technically a misnomer, went on to become the most widely known label for Whorf's ideas. According to John A. Lucy , "Whorf's work in linguistics
1708-690: A kind of "linguistic relativity" stems from his article "Language, Mind and Reality" published during the Second World War, where Whorf criticized American scientists, especially some physicists who were searching for a substance where there are only substantive words such as energy and searching for an expenditure of energy where there are only transitive verbs such as transform , thus trying to disprove Einstein's Theory of Relativity , which helps us predict how much mass must be consumed to produce how much energy. Whorf claimed in this article that this "Aryan Western Logic" coming from "Western Languages"
1830-483: A more in-depth understanding of his theories. The field of linguistic relativity remains an active area of research in psycholinguistics and linguistic anthropology , generating ongoing debates between relativism and universalism . Whorf's contributions to linguistics, such as the allophone and the cryptotype , have been widely accepted. The son of Harry Church Whorf and Sarah Edna Lee Whorf, Benjamin Lee Whorf
1952-456: A period is used: kwaahu ('eagle') but kuk.wuwàaqe ('to follow tracks'). The Deseret alphabet , an alphabetical system developed by Mormon scholars in modern-day Utah, was used for academic notation of the language in a handwritten English–Hopi dictionary made in 1860 that was rediscovered in 2014. Hopi uses suffixes for a variety of purposes. Some examples are: Hopi also has free postpositions: Nouns are marked as oblique by either
2074-548: A piece of paper, saying to the director: "I think this is what you're doing". The surprised director asked Whorf how he knew about the secret procedure, and he simply answered: "You couldn't do it in any other way." Whorf helped to attract new customers to the Fire Insurance Company; they favored his thorough inspections and recommendations. Another famous anecdote from his job was used by Whorf to argue that language use affects habitual behavior. Whorf described
2196-480: A pioneer in linguistics, but a pioneer as a human being". Today, many followers of universalist schools of thought continue to oppose the idea of linguistic relativity, seeing it as unsound or even ridiculous. For example, Steven Pinker argues in his book The Language Instinct that thought exists prior to language and independently of it, a view also espoused by philosophers of language such as Jerry Fodor , John Locke and Plato . In this interpretation, language
2318-401: A program of graduate studies, nominally working towards a PhD in linguistics, but he never actually attempted to obtain a degree, satisfying himself with participating in the intellectual community around Sapir. At Yale, Whorf joined the circle of Sapir's students that included such luminaries as Morris Swadesh , Mary Haas , Harry Hoijer , G. L. Trager and Charles F. Voegelin . Whorf took on
2440-506: A radical and influential rereading of Whorf in 1979 and subsequently in the field of linguistic anthropology . Whorf conducted important work on the Uto-Aztecan languages , which Sapir had conclusively demonstrated as a valid language family in 1915. Working first on Nahuatl, Tepecano , and Tohono O'odham , he had established familiarity with the language group before he met Sapir in 1928. During Whorf's time at Yale, he published several articles on Uto-Aztecan linguistics, such as "Notes on
2562-570: A semantic and grammatical analysis of Biblical Hebrew . Whorf's early manuscripts on Hebrew and Maya have been described as exhibiting a considerable degree of mysticism , as he sought to uncover esoteric meanings of glyphs and letters. Whorf studied Biblical linguistics mainly at the Watkinson Library (now Hartford Public Library ). This library had an extensive collection of materials about Native American linguistics and folklore , originally collected by James Hammond Trumbull . It
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#17327834718012684-519: A series of Aztec pictograms found at the Tepozteco monument at Tepoztlán, Morelos in which he noted similarities in form and meaning between Aztec and Maya day signs. Although Whorf had been entirely an autodidact in linguistic theory and field methodology up to this point, he had already made a name for himself in Mesoamerican linguistics. Whorf had met Sapir, the leading US linguist of
2806-470: A total area of 11.9 square miles (31 km), all land. At the 2000 census there were 767 people, 246 households, and 181 families in the CDP. The population density was 64.4 inhabitants per square mile (24.9/km). There were 331 housing units at an average density of 27.8 per square mile (10.7/km). The racial makeup of the CDP was 96.0% Native American, 3.8% White, and 0.2% from two or more races. 1.0% of
2928-445: A velar followed by a low vowel. With the addition of these loanwords, a third velar contrast has been introduced into Hopi. Words with this borrowed velar are "neutral" and typically velar in articulation. Thus, there is a distinction between ⟨kya⟩ [cja] and ⟨qa⟩ [ḵa] in native words both of which are distinct from ⟨ka⟩ [ka] in loanwords . The precise phonetics of these k consonants
3050-509: A volume, "Rethinking Linguistic Relativity" edited by John J. Gumperz and Stephen C. Levinson gathered a range of researchers working in psycholinguistics , sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology to bring renewed attention to the issue of how Whorf's theories could be updated, and a subsequent review of the new direction of the linguistic relativity paradigm cemented the development. Since then considerable empirical research into linguistic relativity has been carried out, especially at
3172-558: A vowel + h sequence in the Second Mesa dialect recorded by Whorf. Hopi is written using the Latin alphabet. The vowel letters correspond to the phonemes of Hopi as follows, and long vowels are written double. Consonants are written: Falling accent is marked with a grave ⟨`⟩ : tsirò 'birds'. To distinguish certain consonants written as digraphs from similar looking phonemes meeting across syllable boundaries,
3294-442: A workplace in which full gasoline drums were stored in one room and empty ones in another; he said that because of flammable vapor the "empty" drums were more dangerous than those that were full, although workers handled them less carefully to the point that they smoked in the room with "empty" drums, but not in the room with full ones. Whorf argued that by habitually speaking of the vapor-filled drums as empty and by extension as inert,
3416-616: Is idiolectal free variation with the voiced labial fricative represented with ⟨v⟩ , which varies between labiodental and bilabial [v ~ β] . Before a consonant (word-medially) and at the end of words, it is not voiced although its realization is dependent upon dialect; Third Mesa speakers have [ p ] while Mishongnovi speakers have [ f ] . The alveolar sibilants /ts/ and /s/ are apical . In some Third Mesa speakers, they are palatalized to [ tsʲ ] and [ sʲ ] , which can sound similar to / tʃ / and / ʃ / of English. In Mishongnovi, /ts/
3538-592: Is a subject–object–verb language. Nouns are marked as subject or oblique , as shown above. Pronouns are also marked as either nominative or oblique. For example, the singular subject pronoun "you" in Hopi is um , and the form for the singular object pronoun is ung . Demonstratives are marked by case in Hopi, shown first in their nominative form and then in their oblique form: Benjamin Lee Whorf Benjamin Lee Whorf ( / hw ɔːr f / ; April 24, 1897 – July 26, 1941)
3660-631: Is also found on the simultaneity marker where younger speakers have -kyang against older -kyangw . In words with kw or ngw in the syllable coda , the labialization is also lost: Hopi is part of the Pueblo linguistic area (a Sprachbund ) along with members of the Tanoan family, the Keresan languages , Zuni , and Navajo . Hopi speakers have traditionally used Hopi as the language of communication with Zuni . They have also been in close contact with
3782-458: Is also spoken on Second Mesa in Shipaulovi village, which is close to Mishongnovi village. Whorf notes that other villages on Second Mesa are of unknown dialectal affiliation. An introductory textbook ( Kalectaca (1978) ) has been written by a Shongopavi speaker. Shongopavi is another village on the Second Mesa, but its relation to other dialects has not been analyzed. The Third Mesa dialect
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3904-415: Is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is of course, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data that the agreement decrees. We are thus introduced to a new principle of relativity, which holds that all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of
4026-459: Is hard to predict which suffix applies to which verbs. Second language learners of Hopi usually simply learn this by rote. There are some gender specific terms in Hopi: The simplest type of sentence in Hopi is simply a subject and a predicate : 'Maana wuupa' (the girl is tall). However, many Hopi sentences also include an object, which is inserted between the subject and the verb. Thus, Hopi
4148-591: Is inconsequential to human thought because humans do not think in "natural" language, i.e. any language used for communication. Rather, we think in a meta-language that precedes natural language, which Pinker following Fodor calls " mentalese ." Pinker attacks what he calls "Whorf's radical position", declaring, "the more you examine Whorf's arguments, the less sense they make." Scholars of a more "relativist" bent such as John A. Lucy and Stephen C. Levinson have criticized Pinker for misrepresenting Whorf's views and arguing against strawmen . The idea that Whorf defended
4270-409: Is often called "Sapir–Whorf studies". Whorf and Sapir both drew explicitly on Albert Einstein 's principle of general relativity ; hence linguistic relativity refers to the concept of grammatical and semantic categories of a specific language providing a frame of reference as a medium through which observations are made. Following an original observation by Boas, Sapir demonstrated that speakers of
4392-560: Is palatalized when at the beginning of syllables and non-palatalized elsewhere. Hopi has a number of stop contrasts at the velar place of articulation that occur before the low vowel / a / . Elsewhere, the contrasts are neutralized. The velar in environments of neutralization is called "neutral" k by Jeanne (1978) . Before the front vowels / i / and / ɛ / , it is palatalized with a fronted articulation and following palatal glide [ j ] . Thus, ⟨ki⟩ and ⟨ke⟩ are [cji] and [cjɛ] , respectively. Before
4514-473: Is post-velar and not quite uvular . Malotki (1983) describes the fronted sound and the sound from Spanish loanwords as palatal while the backed ones are velar. Whorf (1946) describes the fronted form as palatal with palatal glide before some vowels, The form from Spanish loanwords as "ordinary k", and the backed form as velar. Whorf's letter to Clyde Kluckhohn in Kluckhohn & MacLeish (1955) describes
4636-609: Is spoken on First Mesa (which is the eastern mesa) in Polacca village in Walpi pueblo and in other neighboring communities. A community of Arizona Tewa live on First Mesa, and its members speak Tewa , in addition to a variety of Hopi and English and Spanish. Mishongnovi is spoken on Second Mesa (which is the central mesa) in Mishongnovi village. Mishongnovi has few speakers compared to First and Third Mesa dialects. Shipaulovi
4758-518: Is spoken on Third Mesa (which is the western mesa) at Oraibi village and in neighboring communities, as well as in Moenkopi village, which lies off Third Mesa and at a distance west of it. The first published analysis of the Hopi language is Benjamin Whorf 's study of Mishongnovi Hopi. His work was based primarily on a single off-reservation informant , but it was later checked by other reservation speakers. In his study, he states that Mishongnovi
4880-405: Is the most archaic and phonemically complex of the dialects. The Third Mesa dialect preserves some older relics that have been lost in Mishongnovi. Malotki (1983) reports that Third Mesa speakers of younger generations have lost the labialization feature of w on the different subject subordinator -qw after the vowels a , i , e , u where they have -q instead. This loss of labialization
5002-404: Is unclear due to vague descriptions in the literature. Voegelin (1956) suggests that the fronted articulation represented by ⟨ky⟩ is distinguished more by presence of the palatal glide than by the difference in the articulatory position of the dorsal contact. He also mentions that the backed sound represented by ⟨q⟩ is "not-so-far-back". This suggests that this sound
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5124-696: The MIT Technology Review titled "Science and Linguistics", "Linguistics as an Exact Science" and "Language and Logic". He was also invited to contribute an article to a theosophical journal, Theosophist , published in Madras , India , for which he wrote "Language, Mind and Reality". In these final pieces, he offered a critique of Western science in which he suggested that non-European languages often referred to physical phenomena in ways that more directly reflected aspects of reality than many European languages, and that science ought to pay attention to
5246-688: The Azteco-Tanoan language family , proposed originally by Sapir as a family comprising the Uto-Aztecan and the Kiowa- Tanoan languages —(the Tewa and Kiowa languages ). In a series of published and unpublished studies in the 1930s, Whorf argued that Mayan writing was to some extent phonetic. While his work on deciphering the Maya script gained some support from Alfred Tozzer at Harvard,
5368-562: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology , where his academic performance was of average quality , with a degree in chemical engineering . In 1920, he married Celia Inez Peckham; they had three children, Raymond Ben, Robert Peckham and Celia Lee. Around the same time he began work as a fire prevention engineer (an inspector) for the Hartford Fire Insurance Company . He was particularly good at
5490-603: The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics with scholarship motivating two edited volumes of linguistic relativity studies, and in American Institutions by scholars such as Lera Boroditsky and Dedre Gentner . In turn universalist scholars frequently dismiss Whorf's claims as "dull" or "boring", as well as positive findings of influence of grammatical categories on thought or behavior, which are often subtle rather than spectacular. Despite
5612-461: The Nahuan or Aztecan languages having undergone a sound change from the original * /t/ to [tɬ] in the position before * /a/ . This sound law is known as " Whorf's law ", considered valid although a more detailed understanding of the precise conditions under which it took place has since been developed. Also in 1937, Whorf and his friend G. L. Trager published a paper in which they elaborated on
5734-597: The Native American languages as their first language. More recently, Hopi language programs for children on the reservation have been implemented. Many Hopi children are being raised in the language. A comprehensive Hopi-English dictionary edited by Emory Sekaquaptewa and others has been published, and a group, the Hopi Literacy Project, has focused its attention on promoting the language. As of 2013, "a pilot language revitalization project,
5856-553: The Peabody Museum at Harvard. He also began to study the comparative linguistics of the Uto-Aztecan language family , which Edward Sapir had recently demonstrated to be a linguistic family. In addition to Nahuatl, Whorf studied the Piman and Tepecano languages , while in close correspondence with linguist J. Alden Mason . Because of the promise shown by his work on Uto-Aztecan, Tozzer and Spinden advised Whorf to apply for
5978-480: The Tübatulabal language ". In 1935 he published "The Comparative Linguistics of Uto-Aztecan", and a review of Kroeber's survey of Uto-Aztecan linguistics. Whorf's work served to further cement the foundations of comparative Uto-Aztecan studies. The first Native American language Whorf studied was the Uto-Aztecan language Nahuatl , which he first studied from colonial grammars and documents; later, it became
6100-484: The historical and descriptive linguistics of Uto-Aztecan. Whorf published several articles on that topic in this period, some of them with G. L. Trager, who had become his close friend. Whorf took a special interest in the Hopi language and started working with Ernest Naquayouma, a speaker of Hopi from Toreva village living in Manhattan , New York. Whorf credited Naquayouma as the source of most of his information on
6222-497: The prosody of these dialects which he related to the history of the glottal stop and vowel length in Nahuan languages. This work was prepared for publication by Lyle Campbell and Frances Karttunen in 1993, who also considered it a valuable description of the two endangered dialects, and the only one of its kind to include detailed phonetic analysis of supra-segmental phenomena. In Uto-Aztecan linguistics, one of Whorf's achievements
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#17327834718016344-400: The " cryptotype ", and the conception of "how grammar models reality", that it would "eventually turn out to be among the major contributions of twentieth century linguistics". Furthermore, Whorf introduced the concept of allophones , which are positional phonetic variants of a single superordinate phoneme ; in doing so he placed a cornerstone in consolidating early phoneme theory. The term
6466-412: The 1980s, most mentions of Whorf or of the Sapir–Whorf hypotheses continued to be disparaging, and led to a widespread view that Whorf's ideas had been proven wrong. Because Whorf was treated so severely in the scholarship during those decades, he has been described as "one of the prime whipping boys of introductory texts to linguistics". With the advent of cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics in
6588-490: The CDP was $ 5,975. About 58.9% of families and 69.4% of the population were below the poverty line , including 78.2% of those under age 18 and 41.4% of those age 65 or over. Hotevilla-Bacavi is a part of the Cedar Unified School District . White Cone High School serves Hotevilla-Bacavi. Hopi language The use of Hopi has gradually declined over the course of the 20th century. In 1990, it
6710-519: The Hopi Lavayi Nest Model Program, for families with children birth through 5," is being planned for the village of Sipaulovi . In 2004, Mesa Media, a nonprofit organization, was created to help revitalize the language. Since 2019, more recent Hopi language revitalization programs have been reported, involving language immersion for children. Benjamin Whorf identifies four varieties ( dialects ) of Hopi: First Mesa
6832-516: The Hopi language refers to time. Malotki argues that in the Hopi language the system of tenses consists of future and non-future and that the single difference between the three-tense system of European languages and the Hopi system, is that the latter combines past and present to form a single category. Critics of Whorf frequently refer to Malotki's data, which would appear to contradict Whorf's statements on Hopi, in order to refute his concept of linguistic relativity; while other scholars have defended
6954-571: The Hopi language, although in 1938 he took a short field trip to the village of Mishongnovi, on the Second Mesa of the Hopi Reservation in Arizona . In 1936, Whorf was appointed honorary research fellow in anthropology at Yale, and he was invited by Franz Boas to serve on the committee of the Society of American Linguistics (later Linguistic Society of America ). In 1937, Yale awarded him
7076-481: The Hopi view of time was fundamental in all aspects of their culture and furthermore explained certain patterns of behavior. In his 1939 memorial essay to Sapir he wrote that "... the Hopi language is seen to contain no words, grammatical forms, construction or expressions that refer directly to what we call 'time', or to past, present, or future..." Linguist Ekkehart Malotki challenged Whorf's analyses of Hopi temporal expressions and concepts with numerous examples how
7198-544: The Shawnee language focuses on the movement—using an arm to create a dry space in a hole. The event described is the same, but the attention in terms of figure and ground are different. If read superficially, some of Whorf's statements lend themselves to the interpretation that he supported linguistic determinism . For example, in an often-quoted passage Whorf writes: We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. The categories and types that we isolate from
7320-504: The Sterling Fellowship. He was a lecturer in anthropology from 1937 through 1938, replacing Sapir, who was gravely ill. Whorf gave graduate level lectures on "Problems of American Indian Linguistics". In 1938 with Trager's assistance he elaborated a report on the progress of linguistic research at the department of anthropology at Yale. The report includes some of Whorf's influential contributions to linguistic theory, such as
7442-461: The Third Mesa and Mishongnovi dialects. The Third Mesa inventory has orthographic symbols and IPA transcriptions of those symbols when the IPA symbol differs from the orthographic symbol. As seen above, the Mishongnovi dialect has a larger number of consonants when compared with the Third Mesa dialect. The additional consonants are a series of preaspirated stops and a series of voiceless sonorants. There
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#17327834718017564-547: The Whorfian hypothesis declined in the 1960s to 1980s as Noam Chomsky began to redefine linguistics and much of psychology in formal universalist terms. Several studies from that period refuted Whorf's hypothesis, demonstrating that linguistic diversity is a surface veneer that masks underlying universal cognitive principles. Many studies were highly critical and disparaging in their language, ridiculing Whorf's analyses and examples or his lack of an academic degree. Throughout
7686-425: The ability to arrive at progressively more accurate descriptions of the world hinged partly on the ability to construct a metalanguage to describe how language affects experience, and thus to have the ability to calibrate different conceptual schemes. Whorf's endeavors have since been taken up in the development of the study of metalinguistics and metalinguistic awareness , first by Michael Silverstein who published
7808-557: The analysis of Hopi, arguing that Whorf's claim was not that Hopi lacked words or categories to describe temporality, but that the Hopi concept of time is altogether different from that of English speakers. Whorf described the Hopi categories of tense , noting that time is not divided into past, present and future, as is common in European languages, but rather a single tense refers to both present and past while another refers to events that have not yet happened and may or may not happen in
7930-463: The attraction by ideas of linguistic relativity. Whorf said that "of all groups of people with whom I have come in contact, Theosophical people seem the most capable of becoming excited about ideas—new ideas." Around 1924, Whorf first became interested in linguistics . Originally, he analyzed Biblical texts, seeking to uncover hidden layers of meaning. Inspired by the esoteric work La langue hebraïque restituée by Antoine Fabre d'Olivet , he began
8052-405: The backed velar as being like Arabic or Nootka ⟨q⟩ , which suggests a uvular articulation. Whorf's phonemicization of Mishongnovi posits the fronted version occurring before all vowels but / ø / (with a fronted allophone before / i / , / ɛ / , and / a / ); the backed form occurring before non-high vowels ( / ɛ / , / ø / , and / a / ); and the form from Spanish loanwords before /
8174-556: The collections of Maya hieroglyphic texts . Quickly becoming conversant with the materials, he began a scholarly dialog with Mesoamericanists such as Alfred Tozzer , the Maya archaeologist at Harvard University , and Herbert Spinden of the Brooklyn Museum . In 1928, he first presented a paper at the International Congress of Americanists in which he presented his translation of a Nahuatl document held at
8296-428: The concept of linguistic relativity meant that translation between languages with different conceptual schemes would be impossible. Recent assessments such as those by Leavitt and Lee, however, consider Black and Davidson's interpretation to be based on an inaccurate characterization of Whorf's viewpoint, and even rather absurd given the time he spent trying to translate between different conceptual schemes. In their view,
8418-405: The concept of the allophone and of covert grammatical categories . Lee (1996) has argued, that in this report Whorf's linguistic theories exist in a condensed form, and that it was mainly through this report that Whorf exerted influence on the discipline of descriptive linguistics. In late 1938, Whorf's own health declined. After an operation for cancer, he fell into an unproductive period. He
8540-609: The concept originated from 19th-century philosophy and thinkers like Wilhelm von Humboldt and Wilhelm Wundt . Whorf initially pursued chemical engineering but developed an interest in linguistics, particularly Biblical Hebrew and indigenous Mesoamerican languages . His groundbreaking work on the Nahuatl language earned him recognition, and he received a grant to study it further in Mexico. He presented influential papers on Nahuatl upon his return. Whorf later studied linguistics with Edward Sapir at Yale University while working as
8662-405: The construction of experience through meaning have been increasing since the 1990s, and a series of experimental results have corroborated Whorf's claims, when understood as he presented them, especially in cultural psychology and linguistic anthropology . One of the earliest linguistic descriptions directing positive attention towards Whorf's claims that grammatical categories construed meaning
8784-575: The critiques are based on a lack of familiarity with Whorf's writings; according to these recent Whorf scholars a more accurate description of his viewpoint is that he thought translation to be possible, but only through careful attention to the subtle differences between conceptual schemes. Eric Lenneberg , Noam Chomsky , and Steven Pinker have also criticized Whorf for failing to be sufficiently clear in his formulation of how language influences thought, and for failing to provide real evidence to support his assumptions. Generally Whorf's arguments took
8906-565: The day, at professional conferences, and in 1931 Sapir came to Yale from the University of Chicago to take a position as Professor of Anthropology . Alfred Tozzer sent Sapir a copy of Whorf's paper on "Nahuatl tones and saltillo". Sapir replied stating that it "should by all means be published"; however, it was not until 1993 that it was prepared for publication by Lyle Campbell and Frances Karttunen . Whorf took Sapir's first course at Yale on "American Indian Linguistics". He enrolled in
9028-432: The differences in conceptual schemes through linguistic analysis. Whorf's study of Hopi time has been the most widely discussed and criticized example of linguistic relativity. In his analysis he argues that there is a relation between how the Hopi people conceptualize time, how they speak of temporal relations, and the grammar of the Hopi language. Whorf's most elaborate argument for the existence of linguistic relativity
9150-400: The different sound appear similar to native speakers of the language, even to the point that they are unable to distinguish them auditorily without special training. Whorf wrote that: "[allophones] are also relativistic. Objectively, acoustically, and physiologically the allophones of [a] phoneme may be extremely unlike, hence the impossibility of determining what is what. You always have to keep
9272-595: The effects of linguistic categorization in its efforts to describe the physical world. He particularly criticized the Indo-European languages for promoting a mistaken essentialist world view, which had been disproved by advances in the science, in contrast suggesting that other languages dedicated more attention to processes and dynamics rather than stable essences. Whorf argued that paying attention to how other physical phenomena are described across languages could make valuable contributions to science by pointing out
9394-504: The fact that scientists were trying to find substances and loss of energy in the transformation of mass into energy and that Whorf was correct in his critique against such lines of research, these researchers do not mention the context in which Whorf wrote his critique of scientists and claim that Whorf's supposed "linguistic relativity" had promised more spectacular findings than it was able to provide. Whorf's views have been compared to those of philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and
9516-473: The form of examples that were anecdotal or speculative, and functioned as attempts to show how "exotic" grammatical traits were connected to what were considered equally exotic worlds of thought. Even Whorf's defenders admitted that his writing style was often convoluted and couched in neologisms – attributed to his awareness of language use, and his reluctance to use terminology that might have pre-existing connotations. McWhorter (2009 :156) argues that Whorf
9638-499: The future. He also described a large array of stems that he called "tensors" which describes aspects of temporality, but without referring to countable units of time as in English and most European languages. Whorf's distinction between "overt" (phenotypical) and "covert" (cryptotypical) grammatical categories has become widely influential in linguistics and anthropology. British linguist Michael Halliday wrote about Whorf's notion of
9760-488: The hostiles were opposed. Later attempts to reintegrate displaced residents resulted in another split to the settlement of Bacavi, which later joined with Hotevilla to create a unified settlement. Hotevilla is mentioned by D. H. Lawrence in his Mornings in Mexico travel memoir. The English author visited Hotevilla and Hopi country in 1924. According to the United States Census Bureau , the CDP has
9882-445: The ideas of literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin , who read Whorf and whose approach to textual meaning was similarly holistic and relativistic. Whorf's ideas have also been interpreted as a radical critique of positivist science. Whorf is best known as the main proponent of what he called the principle of linguistic relativity, but which is often known as "the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis", named for him and Edward Sapir. Whorf never stated
10004-405: The job and was highly commended by his employers. His job required him to travel to production facilities throughout New England to be inspected. One anecdote describes him arriving at a chemical plant and being denied access by the director, who would not allow anyone to see the production procedure, which was a trade secret. Having been told what the plant produced, Whorf wrote a chemical formula on
10126-479: The late Ludwig Wittgenstein , both of whom considered language to have important bearing on thought and reasoning. His hypotheses have also been compared to the views of psychologists such as Lev Vygotsky , whose social constructivism considers the cognitive development of children to be mediated by the social use of language. Vygotsky shared Whorf's interest in gestalt psychology, and he also read Sapir's works. Others have seen similarities between Whorf's work and
10248-526: The late 1980s, some linguists sought to rehabilitate Whorf's reputation, as scholarship began to question whether earlier critiques of Whorf were justified. By the 1960s, analytical philosophers also became aware of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, and philosophers such as Max Black and Donald Davidson published scathing critiques of Whorf's strong relativist viewpoints. Black characterized Whorf's ideas about metaphysics as demonstrating "amateurish crudity". According to Black and Davidson, Whorf's viewpoint and
10370-416: The main authority on Ancient Maya culture at the time, J. E. S. Thompson , strongly rejected Whorf's ideas, saying that Mayan writing lacked a phonetic component and is therefore impossible to decipher based on a linguistic analysis. Whorf argued that it was exactly the reluctance to apply linguistic analysis of Maya languages that had held the decipherment back. Whorf sought for cues to phonetic values within
10492-665: The more rear articulation of the backed dorsal: [ ŋ̠ ] . The retroflex sound represented with ⟨r⟩ varies between a retroflex fricative ( [ ʐ ] ) and a flap [ ɾ ] , although the fricative realization is much more common. In Mishongnovi, this sound is only weakly fricative. In syllable coda position, it is devoiced to a voiceless fricative [ ʂ ] . The preaspirated stops /ʰp, ʰt, ʰts, ʰkʷ, ʰk, ʰq/ and voiceless sonorants /m̥, n̥, ŋ̠̊, l̥, ȷ̊, w̥/ of Mishongnovi only occur in syllable coda position. However, they do contrast with plain stops and voiced sonorants in this position. Whorf notes that
10614-416: The non-front vowels / ɨ / and / o / , it is a typical velar: ⟨ku⟩ is [kɨ] and ⟨ko⟩ is [ko] . Before the front rounded vowel / ø / , it has a backed articulation: ⟨kö⟩ is [ḵø] . Before / a / , there is a phonemic contrast with fronted velar with following palatal glide and the backed velar. Complicating this pattern are words borrowed from Spanish that have
10736-516: The observer in the picture. What linguistic pattern makes like is like, and what it makes unlike is unlike".(Whorf, 1940) Central to Whorf's inquiries was the approach later described as metalinguistics by G. L. Trager, who in 1950 published four of Whorf's essays as "Four articles on Metalinguistics". Whorf was crucially interested in the ways in which speakers come to be aware of the language that they use, and become able to describe and analyze language using language itself to do so. Whorf saw that
10858-419: The outset. Focusing on color terminology , with easily discernible differences between perception and vocabulary, Brown and Lenneberg published in 1954 a study of Zuni color terms that slightly support a weak effect of semantic categorization of color terms on color perception. In doing so they began a line of empirical studies that investigated the principle of linguistic relativity. Empirical testing of
10980-602: The paper "Stem series in Maya" at the Linguistic Society of America conference, in which he argued that in the Mayan languages syllables carry symbolic content. The SSRC awarded Whorf the grant and in 1930 he traveled to Mexico City , where Professor Robert H. Barlow put him in contact with several speakers of Nahuatl to serve as his informants. The outcome of the trip to Mexico was Whorf's sketch of Milpa Alta Nahuatl, published only after his death, and an article on
11102-403: The population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. Of the 246 households 34.6% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 41.1% were married couples living together, 28.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 26.4% were non-families. 24.4% of households were one person and 8.9% were one person aged 65 or older. The average household size was 3.12 and the average family size
11224-502: The preaspirated stops also contrast with a similar sequence of /h/ + stop. The most common syllable clusters are CV and CVC. The CVCC cluster is very rare due to limited number of CC combinations in the language. This also makes it unusual to find the intrasyllabic clusters C-C and CC-C. The stress pattern in Hopi follows a simple rule that applies to nearly all words. Some exceptions to this rule are sikisve "car", wehekna "spill" and warikiwta "running". We would expect
11346-438: The principle in the form of a hypothesis, and the idea that linguistic categories influence perception and cognition was shared by many other scholars before him. But because Whorf, in his articles, gave specific examples of how he saw the grammatical categories of specific languages related to conceptual and behavioral patterns, he pointed towards an empirical research program that has been taken up by subsequent scholars, and which
11468-401: The second vowel to be stressed but in fact the first one is stressed in these examples. The Third Mesa dialect of Hopi has developed tone on long vowels, diphthongs, and vowel + sonorant sequences. This dialect has either falling tones or level tones. The falling tone (high-low) in the Third Mesa dialect corresponds to either a vowel + preaspirated consonant, a vowel + voiceless sonorant, or
11590-451: The statement that observers are led to different pictures of the universe has been understood as an argument that different conceptualizations are not comparable, making translation between different conceptual and linguistic systems impossible. Neo-Whorfians argue this to be a misreading since throughout his work one of his main points was that such systems could be "calibrated" and thereby be made commensurable, but only when we become aware of
11712-459: The subject of his first field work experience in 1930. Based on his studies of Classical Nahuatl , Whorf argued that Nahuatl was an oligosynthetic language , a typological category that he invented. In Mexico working with native speakers, he studied the dialects of Milpa Alta and Tepoztlán . His grammar sketch of the Milpa Alta dialect of Nahuatl was not published during his lifetime, but it
11834-411: The suffixes -t for simple nouns or -y for dual nouns (those referring to exactly two individuals), possessed nouns or plural nouns. Some examples are shown below: Verbs are also marked by suffixes but these are not used in a regular pattern. For example, the suffixes -lawu and -ta are both used to make a simple verb into a durative one (implying the action is ongoing and not yet complete) but it
11956-466: The topic: the first one analyzed the intellectual genealogy of the hypothesis, arguing that previous studies had failed to appreciate the subtleties of Whorf's thinking; they had been unable to formulate a research agenda that would actually test Whorf's claims. Lucy proposed a new research design so that the hypothesis of linguistic relativity could be tested empirically, and to avoid the pitfalls of earlier studies which Lucy claimed had tended to presuppose
12078-581: The universality of the categories they were studying. His second book was an empirical study of the relation between grammatical categories and cognition in the Yucatec Maya language of Mexico . In 1996 Penny Lee's reappraisal of Whorf's writings was published, reinstating Whorf as a serious and capable thinker. Lee argued that previous explorations of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis had largely ignored Whorf's actual writings, and consequently asked questions very unlike those Whorf had asked. Also in that year
12200-506: The universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated. The statements about the obligatory nature of the terms of language have been taken to suggest that Whorf meant that language completely determined the scope of possible conceptualizations. However, neo-Whorfians argue that here Whorf is writing about the terms in which we speak of the world, not the terms in which we think of it. Whorf noted that to communicate thoughts and experiences with members of
12322-428: The ways in which certain assumptions about reality are implicit in the structure of language itself, and how language guides the attention of speakers towards certain phenomena in the world; these phenomena risk becoming overemphasized while leaving other phenomena at risk of being overlooked. At Whorf's death, his friend G. L. Trager was appointed as curator of his unpublished manuscripts. Some of them were published in
12444-491: The workers were oblivious to the risk posed by smoking near the "empty drums". Whorf was a spiritual man throughout his lifetime, although what religion he followed has been the subject of debate. As a young man, he produced a manuscript titled "Why I have discarded evolution ", causing some scholars to describe him as a devout Methodist , who was impressed with fundamentalism , and perhaps supportive of creationism . However, throughout his life Whorf's main religious interest
12566-485: 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 kaleidoscope flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds—and this means largely by the linguistic systems of our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way—an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and
12688-422: The years after his death by another of Whorf's friends, Harry Hoijer . In the decade following, Trager and particularly Hoijer did much to popularize Whorf's ideas about linguistic relativity, and it was Hoijer who coined the term "Sapir–Whorf hypothesis" at a 1954 conference. Trager then published an article titled "The systematization of the Whorf hypothesis", which contributed to the idea that Whorf had proposed
12810-438: Was George Lakoff 's "Women, Fire and Dangerous Things", in which he argued that Whorf had been on the right track when he claimed that a contrast in grammatical categories is a resource for a contrast in experiencial meaning, thus that the way we usually represent our experience (including through grammatical categories) impacts the way our senses are organised as experience. In 1992 psychologist John A. Lucy published two books on
12932-422: Was theosophy , a nonsectarian organization based on Buddhist and Hindu teachings that promotes the view of the world as an interconnected whole and the unity and brotherhood of humankind "without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or color". Some scholars have argued that the conflict between spiritual and scientific inclinations has been a driving force in Whorf's intellectual development, particularly in
13054-463: Was 3.72. The age distribution was 31.0% under the age of 18, 9.0% from 18 to 24, 24.8% from 25 to 44, 22.7% from 45 to 64, and 12.5% 65 or older. The median age was 35 years. For every 100 females, there were 90.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 83.0 males. The median household income was $ 13,750 and the median family income was $ 18,500. Males had a median income of $ 12,174 versus $ 19,095 for females. The per capita income for
13176-484: Was Polish philosopher Alfred Korzybski 's General semantics , which was espoused in the US by Stuart Chase . Chase admired Whorf's work and frequently sought out a reluctant Whorf, who considered Chase to be "utterly incompetent by training and background to handle such a subject." Ironically, Chase would later write the foreword for Carroll's collection of Whorf's writings. Sapir also encouraged Whorf to continue his work on
13298-444: Was also deeply affected by Sapir's death in early 1939. It was in the writings of his last two years that he laid out the research program of linguistic relativity . His 1939 memorial article for Sapir, "The Relation of Habitual Thought And Behavior to Language", in particular has been taken to be Whorf's definitive statement of the issue, and is his most frequently quoted piece. In his last year Whorf also published three articles in
13420-407: Was also influenced by gestalt psychology , believing that languages require their speakers to describe the same events as different gestalt constructions, which he called "isolates from experience". An example is how the action of cleaning a gun is different in English and Shawnee : English focuses on the instrumental relation between two objects and the purpose of the action (removing dirt); whereas
13542-454: Was an American linguist and fire prevention engineer best known for proposing the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis . He believed that the structures of different languages shape how their speakers perceive and conceptualize the world. Whorf saw this idea, named after him and his mentor Edward Sapir , as having implications similar to those of Einstein 's principle of physical relativity . However,
13664-476: Was and still is recognized as being of superb professional quality by linguists". Whorf's work began to fall out of favor less than a decade after his death, and he was subjected to severe criticism from scholars of language, culture and psychology. In 1953 and 1954, psychologists Roger Brown and Eric Lenneberg criticized Whorf for his reliance on anecdotal evidence, formulating a hypothesis to scientifically test his ideas, which they limited to an examination of
13786-495: Was at the Watkinson library that Whorf became friends with a young boy, John B. Carroll , who later went on to study psychology under B. F. Skinner , and who in 1956 edited and published a selection of Whorf's essays as Language, Thought and Reality Carroll (1956b) . The collection rekindled Whorf's interest in Mesoamerican antiquity. He began studying the Nahuatl language in 1925, and later, beginning in 1928, he studied
13908-452: Was based on what he saw as a fundamental difference in the understanding of time as a conceptual category among the Hopi. He argued that the Hopi language, in contrast to English and other SAE languages , does not treat the flow of time as a sequence of distinct countable instances, like "three days" or "five years", but rather as a single process. Because of this difference, the language lacks nouns that refer to units of time. He proposed that
14030-562: Was born on April 24, 1897, in Winthrop, Massachusetts . His father was an artist, intellectual, and designer – first working as a commercial artist and later as a dramatist. Whorf had two younger brothers, John and Richard , who both went on to become notable artists. John became an internationally renowned painter and illustrator; Richard was an actor in films such as Yankee Doodle Dandy and later an Emmy -nominated television director of such shows as The Beverly Hillbillies . Whorf
14152-563: Was estimated that more than 5,000 people could speak Hopi as a native language (approximately 75% of the population), but only 40 of them were monolingual in Hopi. The 1998 language survey of 200 Hopi people showed that 100% of Hopi elders (60 years or older) were fluent, but fluency in adults (40–59) was only 84%, 50% in young adults (20–39), and 5% in children (2–19). Despite the apparent decline, Hopi and Navajo both are supported by bilingual education programs in Arizona, and children acquire
14274-512: Was mesmerized by the foreignness of indigenous languages, and exaggerated and idealized them. According to Lakoff , Whorf's tendency to exoticize data must be judged in the historical context: Whorf and the other Boasians wrote at a time in which racism and jingoism were predominant, and when it was unthinkable to many that "savages" had redeeming qualities, or that their languages were comparable in complexity to those of Europe. For this alone Lakoff argues, Whorf can be considered to be "[n]ot just
14396-471: Was popularized by G. L. Trager and Bernard Bloch in a 1941 paper on English phonology and went on to become part of standard usage within the American structuralist tradition. Whorf considered allophones to be another example of linguistic relativity. The principle of allophony describes how acoustically different sounds can be treated as reflections of a single phoneme in a language. This sometimes makes
14518-440: Was published posthumously by Harry Hoijer and became quite influential and used as the basic description of " Modern Nahuatl " by many scholars. The description of the dialect is quite condensed and in some places difficult to understand because of Whorf's propensity of inventing his own unique terminology for grammatical concepts, but the work has generally been considered to be technically advanced. He also produced an analysis of
14640-588: Was stopping scientists to accept the theory and spend efforts on its applications, such as the creation of the atomic bomb , which could be decisive for the United States to win or lose the war against the Germans. This is a period when some national socialists in Germany were trying to develop an Aryan Physics , free from counterintuitive findings by Jewish physicists such as Albert Einstein. Studies on
14762-428: Was the intellectual of the three and started conducting chemical experiments with his father's photographic equipment at a young age. He was also an avid reader, interested in botany, astrology, and Middle American prehistory. He read William H. Prescott 's Conquest of Mexico several times. At the age of 17, he began keeping a copious diary in which he recorded his thoughts and dreams. In 1918, Whorf graduated from
14884-417: Was to determine the reason the Nahuatl language has the phoneme /tɬ/ , not found in the other languages of the family. The existence of /tɬ/ in Nahuatl had puzzled previous linguists and caused Sapir to reconstruct a /tɬ/ phoneme for proto-Uto-Aztecan based only on evidence from Aztecan. In a 1937 paper published in the journal American Anthropologist , Whorf argued that the phoneme resulted from some of
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