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

[Ellen F.Prince]

And Catalan uses the verb for 'go' as its past tense auxiliary.

Iconicity is in the eye of the beholder...

Ellen Prince


On 14 Jun, 2006, at 5:30 PM, Paul Hopper wrote:

> 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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