Aymara's time metaphor reversed? Yahgan says....

Paul Hopper hopper at cmu.edu
Wed Jun 14 21:30:55 UTC 2006


Jess,

Both 'push forward' and 'push back' can mean "postpone", as in the following examples (thanks to Google.com):

1. Pickup normally scheduled on observance day of the holiday will be pushed forward to the next regular work day with the remaining pickups that week also pushed forward one day. As an example: a Monday holiday will result in normal Tuesday pick-up being pushed forward to Wednesday of that week.

2. Several readers note that Apple has quietly pushed back the ship dates of its MacBook Pro laptops from February 15th to February 23rd with a delivery date of February 28th, 2006.

Perhaps Aymara speakers aren't the only ones who are confused!

Paul




> Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/06/060613185239.htm
> 
> Apparently Aymara is the only (so far) documented language whose speakers
> view the past as being ahead and the future behind. The terms NAYRA 'eye,
> front, sight' is grammaticalized to mean 'past', while QHIPA 'back,
> behind' is used for 'future'.
> 
> The piece notes ambiguities in such metaphors in languages such as
> English, and the possibility that the evidential system may be a cause of
> the reversed mapping in Aymara.
> 
> Comments:
> 
> Yahgan, a couple of languages 'down' on the 'left' in Chile, may have
> cognate terms. For instance TELLA 'eye, face' may match Aymara NAYRA.
> USHPA 'back, behind' may match QHIPA. Yahgan evidentiality, from the
> manuscript sources I have, does not appear to be as obligate as in
> Aymara, but there are a good number of forms. Yahgan simple past morpheme
> is -de: (e: tense, relatable to TELLA?), simple future -u:a (u: tense,
> relatable to USHPA?).
> 
> USHPA in Yahgan is also grammaticalized in the language to mean 'after
> X'. In the now extinct 19th century Yahgashaga dialect (the basis for the
> vast majority of writings on the language) it was a free or encliticized
> morpheme following the full or pronominal subject NP (SOV, SVO orders
> normal). Tense morphemes, on the other hand, are suffixed to the verb
> stem, after aspect, but before mood affixes. Bound evidentials are
> variably placed within TAM.
> 
> While there is no OBVIOUS grammaticalized form of TELLA in this position,
> it is interesting that there is the form TU:LA, meaning 'if X'. I don't
> know enough about the grammaticalization chains in this area to be able
> to say with any authority that TU:LA is 'from' TELLA, but perhaps one of
> you can tell me? Yahgan has many lexical doublets where there is
> opposition of meaning carried by vowel alternants. Or TU:LA may relate to
> U:LA meaning 'don't'
> 
> The suffixed evidentials include (but are not limited to) -MUSH 'hearsay'
> (from MVRA 'to hear, listen', V is schwa), -MIN 'visual evidence' (no
> simplex but is AMIN 'look, see!' with prefixed mild imperative A-),
> -TIKALVRA 'distant past visual evidential' where -VRA may be a form
> referring to 'contrariness to expectation'.
> 
> The -TIKAL- component may have relatability to TELLA, as also may be the
> form -DVGA-, having a 'past' meaning. From the historical viewpoint, I
> have elsewhere (and here?) claimed possible relation to Salishan
> languages, also on the Pacific coast (but in northern North America) as
> well as to Chemakuan, and further south Chumashan families.
> 
> The Chemakuan 'evidence' implies that the doubled -LLA in TELLA
> originated in -L- followed by a velar or uvular fricative (other forms
> support this). One sees similar things in the other families I include in
> the comparison. Thus, IF true, then perhaps the -K/G- elements seen in
> the above Yahgan forms are explained (with perhaps reordering in
> -TIKAL-).
> 
> I do not know whether -MUSH (and source MVRA) is relatable to USHPA,
> either etymologically or by convergence. I had previously speculated that
> -VRA (also -ARA) 'contrary to expectation' or 'new information' WAS
> relatable to -MUSH/MVRA. And in terms of etymologies within Yahgan, there
> are MANY different lexical forms beginning with USH- referring to the
> lower back or rear, its functions on the body, or products of same. In
> Salishan the lexical suffix -APS/UPS has the same range of reference.
> 
> The suffixal (extended) TAM system in Yahgan appears to be relatively
> young Most of the relevant morphemes still retain corresponding lexical
> entries Positionally the clitic-second (really a chain of slots) group
> also often has matching terms in the suffixal system. For instance -MUSH
> 'hearsay' as suffix is identical in form to (')MUSH in the clitic chain
> set. Further grammaticalization has pushed the latter MUSH towards simple
> modality, seen as well in the surviving dialect 130 years after the
> grammar was laid out for the extinct one by Thomas Bridges.
> 
> The first time I'd ever heard of the reversed time metaphor in Aymara was
> during a talk given by Eve Sweetser (who not surprisingly is the coauthor
> of the study cited above) during the Santa Barbara LSA Linguistic
> Institute a few years 'back'. As I haven't read the source article yet I
> don't know whether other local South American languages were included in
> the study. Joseph Greenberg of course was famous (or infamous depending
> on one's vantage) for attempting to lump, er.. group many of the Pacific
> coast languages under the 'Andean' rubric. It would be interesting to see
> whether they (and perhaps other languages/families further afield) share
> this way of organizing their grammaticalization chains. Since the report
> on the article says that younger bilingual generations appear to be
> switching over to the dominant European time metaphor, it is possible
> that in the past the region was far more uniformly 'reversed', with
> viewpoints doing 'the 180' one by one after the Conquest. Such changes
> are probably completely lost now in the mists of history.
> 
> Of more theoretical import, perhaps, would be the finding that
> directionality of time metaphor might depend in part on 'directionality'
> of grammaticalization? Where tense (if they actually ARE tense) morphemes
> come from may be determined in part by such a directionality, if there is
> one, implicit (perhaps hidden?) within the overall scheme of possible
> canalizations.
> 
> So if any of you aren't having too much fun vacationing comments would be
> of use. Thanks.
> 
> Jess Tauber phonosemantics at earthlink.net
> 
> 
> 
> 



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