Aymara/cog.scie article

[Tom Givon]

Dear Eve & Rafael,

That was a terrific article. Especially the quantified evidence on 
gesture, which gets us out of the circularity of citing purely 
linguistic evidence as 'proof' of cognition. The competing cognitive 
patterns discussion (static vision vs.  dynamic motion) was right on 
too. Much in cross-language typological variation has to do with a range 
of possible patterns that languages can exploit, all equally 
'reasonable' and 'cognitively plausible'. Quite often, the very same 
language 'chooses' one pattern once historically, then on the next 
grammaticalization cycle 'chooses' another (e.g. French chose 'have' as 
the Perfect auxiliary earlier, but appears to be choosing 'come' now as 
the replacement pattern). Universals seem constrain the range of 
possible choices, but it is still a considerable range.

I have one question about the final explanation as to why Aymara (rather 
than other languages) 'choses' the vision metaphor here. You invoke the 
fact that (a) Aymara has a marked evidential system, and (b) vision is 
at the top of the evidential hierarchy in Aymara. But--vision is at the 
top of the EV-hierarchy in ALL known evidential systems. So if your 
explanation holds, then ALL languages with marked EV-morphology 
(Turkish, etc.) ought to exhibit the same 'choice' of the vision-based 
metaphor for time as in Aymara. Or, at the very least (weaker but still 
meaningful correlation), ONLY languages with marked EV-morphology ought 
to exhibit this vision metaphor. Do you have any evidence that either of 
these are viable predictions?

A related question: The fact trhat vision winds up at the top of the 
evidential hierarchy in marked  EV-morphology systems is a powerful 
non-accidental fact about the central/universal role of vision as the 
primary pereceptual modality in humans (indeed, in primates, mammals and 
many avians). This is documented, e.g. by the amount of cortical space 
dedicated to vision, and the number of distinct visual; processing 
centers (vis. Mishkin's and Kaas' old work on primates). So if vision is 
the primary source of knowledge in most mammalians, all primates, & all 
humans, how could Aymara's 'choice' of the vision metaphor be so unique?

Thanks again for a terrific article. Best,  TG