Hopi 'lightning', was RE: person indexing (was: Information)

Thu Dec 19 16:19:18 UTC 2002

Whorf worked with only a single informant who spoke Second Mesa Hopi whereas
almost all other work, including the lexical materials I still have deal
with Third Mesa Hopi.  Although I have been away from Hopi for many years, I
do not recall any real analysis of the differences.
I felt Whorf's descriptions helped me to see past similarities of
nomenclature into subtle differences.  Now the caveats here are that I had
read Whorf long before I went to college and actually studied Hopi, and as I
said, Hopi was the first Native American Lg I studied.  Over the years, I
have often perceived students having a kind of language shock when they
first plunge into serious study of any language outside of their native lg's
family.  Whether this lg shock is real or not, I will leave for others, I
certainly felt something like it the first time around.

I am too far from my Hopi work to even attempt to generate sentences for
you, I will note that "rehpi" does not appear in either the massive "Hopi
Dictionary" or in the Voegelins' "Hopi Domain", both of which treat 3rd Mesa
Hopi.  Kalectaca (1978) produced a pedagogical work for 2nd Mesa Hopi which
lacks "rehpi" as well but the work's limited scope serves only as negative
evidence.

Here are some examples of "lightning" from the dictionary,
Third Mesa has a noun for lightning, 'talwiipiki', Pu' kur i' talwiikpiki
piw kiihut mu'a, "Then it appeared that lightning also struck the house."
This is from the verb, 'talwiipi(k)-, an intransitive verb meaning "for
lightning to flash, occur as a lightning flash", Talwiipikkyangqw pu' yaaw
pay hin'ur umu, "The lightning flashed and it thundered loudly."
Without further turning this into a Hopi listserv, I will note that Hopi,
like most Uto-Aztecan lgs, has an extensive number of forms derived from
Proto-Uto-Aztecan forms of the shape *ta(C)- which gloss as fire, star, sun,
summer, heat, lightning, etc.  (I will be happy to suggest some sources if
anyone is interested but would rather do it privately, i.e., not on the
SIOUAN list.)

There is a fairly detailed criticism of Whorf's methodology of eliciting
examples in the Voegelins' "Hopi Domains" and before citing Whorf's work on
Hopi, I encourage folks to read it, but as always, read it with an open
mind.

Brad Coon
Reference Librarian
The Libraries-Montana State University
bcoon at montana.edu       (406) 994-6026

-----Original Message-----
From: David Kaufman [mailto:dvklinguist at hotmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 12:58 PM
To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
Subject: RE: person indexing (was: Information)

Hi Brad,

Do you feel that Whorf adequately portrayed the Hopi language as having a
different thought process than SAE (Standard Average European [Whorf's
term])?  I know one of his famous examples was "rehpi" in that it would be
translated simply as "flashed" (referring I imagine to lightning) without
specifying any subject or actor.  It sounds like you've confirmed this with
what you say about verbs of natural phenomena having no actor or subject
prefix.  I wonder though if Hopi has a separate noun form for "lightning
flash" or simply any kind of "flash" (i.e., camera flash).  I wonder if one
would say "I see a lightning flash" or "I see (something) flashed" without
specifying *what* flashed.  I wonder how Siouan and other Native American
languages compare in this regard dealing with weather or otherwise.

Regards,
Dave

>From: "Coon, Brad" <bcoon at montana.edu>
>Reply-To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
>To: "'siouan at lists.colorado.edu'" <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
>Subject: RE: person indexing (was: Information)
>Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 09:47:12 -0700
>
>Hopi was the first American Indian lg I studied so its been a while, but
>yes, Hopi definitely inflects verbs for person and number.  3rdSg is a zero
>form morpheme.  I don't recall an impersonal form but I will check my
>materials.
>
>Whorf's work on Hopi seems to be generally ignored by people working on the
>lg
>today but I found his insights very helpful when I was studying the
>language.
>Brad Coon
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Heike Bödeker [mailto:heike.boedeker at netcologne.de]
>Sent: Sunday, December 15, 2002 12:56 PM
>To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
>Subject: person indexing (was: Information)
>
>
>At 10:31 15.12.02 -0800, David Kaufman wrote:
> >In the Hopi example Whorf gave, there appears to be no subject at
> >all--just the verb form
>
>Anyone on this list happening to be knowledgeable about Hopi morphosyntax?
>Is the Hopi verb never inflected for person, as say the verb in Yuki,
>Japanese, Korean, Manju or Mongolian? Is there profanely just some "zero
>marking" for non-speechact-participants (3rd persons)? Does Hopi have some
>formally distinguished category of impersonalization (equivalent to, in
>case of actors French on, German man, in case of undergoers Nahuatl tla-,
>Chukchi (i)ne-)?
>
> >--which, when one thinks about it, when speaking of natural phenomena
>like
> >a lightning flash, why do we need a subject?
>
>Apart from the fact we have lots of things we could question whether we
>really need them ;-) Should it be really such a surprise that there is no
>1:1 r'ship between form and (main) function? And there's really extremely
>queer uses of pronouns, e.g. in German Es tanzt sich gut auf dem neuen
>Parkett. "One can dance well on the new parquet floor", lit: it dances
>itself well... <g>
>
> >There really is no subject (no actor per se unless one wants to say God
>or
> >Nature is doing it).
>
>This was indeed the explanation I was given why Sanskrit var.sati "it
>rains" is active (parasmaipadam), the Gods are doing it. But then, this is
>a widespread idea, too, just to mention another case from the Old World,
>the /Xam associated rain with water-loving animals such as the
>hippopotamus. Now imagine magical practics involving the invocation of
>so-called rain-animals so they may bring the rain along with them. We even
>might naively have expected end up with a causative (which, may I say
>luckily, is not attested). But then, influence of supernatural beings on
>climate, and weathermaking are likewise attested in the New World...
>
>Best,
>
>Heike

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