Usitative

[Scott DeLancey]

On Tue, 16 May 2006, Mia Kalish wrote:

> What I mean is that there is no usitative rule in English, but there is a
> formal position for it in Diné Bizaad. I think the psychology of this is
> intriguing.

How we'd say that is, the semantic category is more grammaticalized in
Diné Bizaad than in English.  And yes, that kind of observation often
looks interesting, and gets you thinking about cultural differences.
But, as I pointed out in a post last week, that can be really dangerous.
It's easy to make up stories about "other" folks that neatly explain
why their grammar is different from yours.  Too easy, and the problem
is that there's no way to ever confirm your particular story.

The other danger is misunderstanding your own language.  Whorf got
great mileage out of contrasting how Hopi and other Native languages
deal with time with the "Standard Average European" system which he
said is found in English.  The problem is that, although the "SAE"
concept is more-or-less what's taught in school, if you look at how
English grammar actually deals with time, it's not an example of the
SAE system at all.  So, while there surely are differences between
Hopi and English means of talking about time, the differences that
Whorf found were only in his own head.  For your question, notice that,
although English doesn't have a formally distinct usitative verb
construction, that's one of the main meanings that go with the simple
present tense:  "What do you do for fun?  I watch movies."

Scott DeLancey
Department of Linguistics
1290 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-1290, USA

delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu
http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html