Usitative

[Mia Kalish]

Hi, Scott, 

Your points are well-made and well-taken. :-)

However, one of the underlying bigotries in this country - and perhaps
across the world - is that Indigenous people do not have sophisticated
mathematical or scientific concepts. There is an enormous amount of physical
material that demonstrates that this is not true. 

So what I am proposing is to use constrained technology to watch the system
emerge. Using constrained technology eliminates the opportunity for people
to make up stuff in their own heads. Certainly we have seen enough academic
stories. However, relations can be found and traced, and put together, these
define a System. It's a lot like saying X + 2 = 4, where in this case, X can
only be "2". 

In English, you look for math in semantics (usual & customary, numerosity,
and the abstract semantics of equations); in Diné Bizaad, you look for it in
the grammar. These grammatical positions form little "sites" that then show
up like stars in the sky. The emergent system are the lines that the stories
that employ these sites describe. Thus you can find an emergent mathematic
system or construct in a story that you can't read. Because you can't read
it, you can't apply your own mathematical understanding. (One of the areas
of my research is how to stifle people's cognitive elaboration; this forces
an accommodation rather than an assimilation, which in a lot of cases is
what you want). 

And the nice thing about such an emergent system is that others can see it
as it emerges on its own. Others don't have to wade through any elaborated
explanation. Its delightfully visual (multimedia lets you color the sites
like points of light, and connect the dots based on theme (numerosity,
frequency, mass nouns, shapes, and so on). Cool, eh?

I don't suspect this is going to be an altogether popular approach in some
circles because it doesn't have any sites for making up stories. . . or what
some people kindly call, Theorizing. Powell did a lot of "theorizing"; look
where it got us!

Ideas?

mia



-----Original Message-----
From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]
On Behalf Of Scott DeLancey
Sent: Wednesday, May 17, 2006 10:49 AM
To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
Subject: Re: [ILAT] Usitative

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