Response From William Bright

[Andre Cramblit]

Begin forwarded message:

From: William Bright <william.bright at colorado.edu>
Date: April 25, 2006 10:24:47 AM PDT
To: <MiaKalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US>
Cc: Susan Gehr <susan at karuk.org>, "cramblit.a" <andrekar at ncidc.org>
Subject: Re: Karuk Names

hello mia kalish; the following correspondence was forwarded to me by  
our mutual friend andré cramblit. let me try to clarify a few things:

(1) your correspondence includes the abstract of my paper  
“ANALYZABILITY” OF NOUNS IN NORTHWESTERN CALIFORNIA, evidently taken  
from my website. but i wonder if you've read the entire paper, which  
is also there on the website. doing so might make the paper more  
understandable. furthermore, that paper is a follow-up to an earlier  
paper i did on animal names in northwestern california, which is also  
on my website. and both of these are follow-ups to a paper that i co- 
published many years ago, in 1965, with my late wife jane bright:  
Semantic structures in Northwestern California and the Sapir-Whorf  
hypothesis. Formal semantic analysis, ed. by Eugene Hammel, AA  
(Special publication) 67:5, pt. 2, pp. 249–58. Reprinted in Cognitive  
anthropology, ed. by Stephen A. Tyler, 66–77. New York: Holt,  
Rinehart & Winston, 1969. Volume reprinted, Prospect Heights, IL:  
Waveland Press, 1987. —all of this of course goes way back to a  
famous statement in sapir's 1921 book language about the  
ethnolinguistic relationship of karuk, yurok, and hupa.

(2) my references to the whorf hypothesis in the above papers were  
not intended to subject that hypothesis to a close critical analysis.  
in fact there have been lots of papers about "what whorf really  
meant", and i think the conclusion is that he did not in fact state  
any single coherent hypothesis. but somehow the "whorfian notion"  
doesn't disappear. in recent years there have been some important  
books, by john lucy and by stephen levinson, on different varieties  
of "neo-whorfianism".

(3) i'm very familiar with the work of george lakoff and of gilles  
fauconnier; but i've never heard of walter freeman, or ??? turner  
(presumably not the anthropologist victor turner, or the sociologist  
ralph turner), or ??? núñez. my wife lise menn is much involved with  
cognitive psychology, from the viewpoints of language development and  
of aphasiology, but she also can't place freeman or turner or núñez. — 
it seems to me that "cognitive psychology" means different things to  
different people.

with best wishes; bill bright

On Apr 25, 2006, at 9:08 AM, Andre Cramblit wrote:

>
> From: Mia Kalish <MiaKalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US>
> Date: April 25, 2006 7:00:50 AM PDT
> To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
> Subject: Re: [ILAT] Names
> Reply-To: Indigenous Languages and Technology  
> <ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU>
>
> I don't actually know him, although I am familiar with some of his  
> work in
> Karuk. I have the Karuk dictionary.
>
> Perhaps you could forward this along to him? I would be interested  
> to hear
> what he says.
>
> Freeman, by the way, was a cognitive neurobiologist. In fact, he  
> still is,
> at maybe UCLA. Lakoff is famous for his work in English metaphors.  
> Turner is
> a cognitive psychologist, while Nuñez is multidisciplinary, with a  
> degree in
> psychology, and his work in metaphoric structures touching on computer
> representation.
>
> The discussion of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis was vicious, is still  
> ongoing,
> and is very detrimental to the view of American languages and the  
> people who
> spoke them. I would speculate that one of the great difficulties in
> revitalization is that American languages are considered  
> "worthless" because
> they ostensibly "lack so many concepts". So as you can see,  
> understanding
> what Whorf was saying maybe be critical to language revitalization  
> in a lot
> of ways: Documentation, conceptualization, analysis.
>
> I once sent out an email asking if there were math words in Ñdn  
> languages,
> and you sent back a note telling me that I would be able to find  
> them using
> Western concepts and direct translation. This is in fact correct,  
> but what I
> began to realize from this and other responses is that despite the  
> vast
> physical representation of math and science around us, there is  
> almost none
> in the collected languages. And I said, Now why is that?
>
> I think it's Powell, in his prescriptive 1880 document about words  
> to be
> collected. There are lots of anthropological categories, and none  
> for math,
> science, and technology. Ñdn astronomy and complex lunar  
> calendricality
> preceded Western accomplishments in these areas by hundreds, perhaps
> thousands of years, but we hear nothing of it in the language in  
> which the
> knowledge developed.
>
> So perhaps you should forward this along to him. Perhaps he would  
> like to
> join our list and have a discussion with the other people here as  
> well. I
> would speculate that a lot of our list would much appreciate the
> opportunity. I know I would.
>
> Best,
> Mia
>
>
>
>
> Mia
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Indigenous Languages and Technology  
> [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]
> On Behalf Of Andre Cramblit
> Sent: Monday, April 24, 2006 10:01 PM
> To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
> Subject: Re: [ILAT] Names
>
> I am not a linguist and not reviewed the works you cite.  Maybe your
> should bring it up with Bill
>
>
> On Apr 24, 2006, at 8:51 PM, Mia Kalish wrote:
>
> You know, Andre, I really hate to do this. I know how important  
> William
> Bright is to the documentation of Northwest languages, but I think
> that this
> is an incorrect interpretation of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. What
> Bright is
> saying is very similar to the idea popular in the 1970s that cognitive
> conceptualizations in the brain resembled the objects themselves.
> This still
> shows up in philosophy and psychology of consciousness. However, the
> idea
> has been debunked. Walter J. Freeman demonstrated that when creatures
> create
> meaning, the conceptual meaning structures are unique to the
> individual, not
> to the stimulus.
>
> Thus, while language and culture are closely linked, intertwined  
> for all
> time, how they EXPRESS is a function of the relationship, not of the
> linguistic forms. What Whorf was saying parallels the theories that
> Lakoff
> began to develop relating to cultural metaphors. Thirty or forty years
> later, Fauconnier and Turner, and Nuñez and Lakoff have developed
> structures
> that show these relational structures. Whorf was saying that semantic
> objects are not going to spring up like mushrooms after a rain if
> there is
> no need for them in the culture. He was also saying that language
> will have
> references for all the things, physical and conceptual, that are
> needed in
> the culture. Hence the discussion of snow and sweet potatoes.
>
> There was a lot of misunderstanding because of the Hopi-Time fiasco.
> Hopi
> has words for Time. So does Diné Bizaad. They just show up in ways  
> very
> different from how they show up (express) in English, and so English
> speakers who have no idea of the differences in internal structure  
> miss
> them. Margaret Mead said something very similar to this, except she  
> was
> talking about humor.
>
> Looking at anthropological aspects is a bit tawdry these days, in poor
> taste, rather. How about the register of boat construction? House
> construction? Tool making? Navigation?
>
> I am reading the hardest book I ever read. It's edited by Marijo
> Moore and
> its called Genocide of the Mind. The hardest, hardest chapter so far
> is by
> Dave Stephenson. He's Tlingit. He writes, "These are our memories,
> and we
> struggle to retain them against a ferocious undertow of cruelty and
> mass-marketed sophistry. Material pursuits and solitary avarice are
> methodologically engendering a great forgetting. We are slowly losing
> our
> memories and sections of our souls" (p. 96). His chapter is called,
> America's Urban Youth and the Importance of Remembering.
>
> So I have to say, this isn't right, describing languages as being
> composed
> of some "unanalyzable morphemes", some descriptive combinations in
> warning
> quotes, and some other combination of both of these <presumably
> undesirable>
> characteristics. Further, there is the really questionable premise of
> "status" being constructed of "areas". Math --> social psychology.
> (Not).
> And what does that mean, anyway, "status of native northwestern
> California
> not as a linguistic area in a strict sense, but as an ethnolinguistic
> area".
>
> Maybe we could retitle the abstract, Karuk Resonances And Pre- 
> modernity.
>
> Mia
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Indigenous Languages and Technology
> [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]
> On Behalf Of Andre Cramblit
> Sent: Sunday, April 23, 2006 3:16 PM
> To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
> Subject: [ILAT] Names
>
> “ANALYZABILITY” OF NOUNS IN NORTHWESTERN CALIFORNIA
> William Bright
> University of Colorado
> www.ncidc.org/bright/
>
> Abstract
>
> Three American Indian tribes of northwestern California — Yurok,
> Hupa, and Karuk — share a nearly uniform culture, but they speak
> entirely distinct and unrelated languages. This is problematic for
> the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, which sees language and culture as
> closely linked. In an earlier paper, the matter was considered in the
> light of names for animals in the three languages. It was found that
> the majority of such names in Yurok consist of unanalyzable single
> morphemes, while the majority in Hupa are “descriptive” combinations
> of several morphemes; the Karuk language lies between the two others.
> A possible explanation was proposed in the historical operation of
> verbal taboo in the usage of hunters and on the names of the
> deceased. In the present paper, the analysis is extended to plant
> terms and to “basic vocabulary”,  but problems are noted in the
> latter concept. It is suggested that the patterns presented here form
> part of the status of native northwestern California not as a
> linguistic area in a strict sense, but as an ethnolinguistic area.
>

William Bright
Emeritus Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology, UCLA
Professor Adjoint of Linguistics, University of Colorado, Boulder
1625 Mariposa Ave., Boulder CO 80302
Tel. 303-444-4274
FAX 303-413-0017
URL <www.ncidc.org/bright>


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