Native American verbs vs. nouns

[Heike Bödeker]

At 20:50 15.12.02 +0000, David Kaufman wrote:
>But, if we extend our thinking beyond the box of English grammar, we could
>just as logically "re-interpret" the Native construct on a different
>thought level--perhaps they perceive "talling" in the sense of it not
>being a state as it appears to us in English "The man is tall"--end of
>story--but perhaps they view "tall" as a process--focusing on the
>continual process of growing taller.

But being (and staying) tall as a state and growing tall(er and taller) as
a process are different affairs in real life (whatever that may be, and
which probably was a neat subject for ethnophilosophical investigations).
What comes closest to your proposal is the category of resultative, i.e. a
category denoing a state resultant from a process. Again, stative and
resultative very nicely may be kept apart in the Old World, too, e.g. in
Akkadian there's a separate category called stative for the former
(mar.sâku "I'm sick") while the latter is one of the functions of the
perfect (šumma bâb ekallim irtapiš "when the gate of the palace [name of a
liver omen] has widened").

Also it is not just a question of what reality really is like, but how I
choose to describe things. Of course, when I say "I'm sick" that implies
that I've fallen sick somewhen. Just that it's a different statement from
"I've fallen sick more than 4 weeks ago". And, still worse, I can't see it
as an advantage if some language didn't provide me the means of expressing
both differently.

>This is why I wonder if speakers of these languages might be more in tune
>to nature and thinking in processes (being more fluidly verb- and
>process-oriented) and this is reflected in their language.

It is a romantic though understandable view, and Findeisen even had
speculated about Paleolithic hunter-gatherers already having gotten tired
of their kind of civilization. But then, where does *your* idea of nature
being more adequately described in terms of processes rather than states
derive from? Is it some time-honored wisdom or 20th century physics? And
which criteria should we use in determining whether say North American
Natives, Tropical Lowland South American Natives, New Guinean Papuas or
Northern San peoples (too large categories anyway) were closer to nature?

All the best,

Heike