Linguistics Encyclopedia.pdf

1 Certainty
/ w/: he comes,
2 Rumour
he is coming
he came
/ wen/: he is said to be coming
3 Interrogative
it is said that he came
/ /: is he coming?
did he come?
4 Positive, contrary to expectations
/ /: so he is coming after all
5 Negative, contrary to expectations:
/ /:
A-Z 411
but he was going to come!
Hopi also has three words which function where English only has one binder, that.
Consider:
(1) I see that it is new
(2) I see that it is red
(3) I hear that it is new
(4) I hear that it is red
In Hopi, (1) has one word for that, (2) another, and (3) and (4) yet another; this is because
three different types of ‘representation to consciousness’ are involved. In (1), the newness
of the object is inferred by the speaker from a number of visual clues and from the
speaker’s past experience; in (2), the redness of the object is directly received in
consciousness through the speaker’s vision; in (3) and (4), the redness and newness are
both perceived directly via the speaker’s faculty of hearing (Trudgill, 1974a, pp. 25–6).
It seems clear, then, that languages, through their grammatical structure, as well as,
more obviously, through their lexis, do not all ‘interpret’ the world and experience in the
same way. The mentalist claim is that a person’s native language sets up a series of
categories which act as a pair of grid spectacles through which s/he views the world; it
categorizes experience for the speakers of the language. This claim is, in a nutshell, what
has become known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, also known as the doctrine of
cultural relativism/relativity or ontological relativity/relativism. Some measure of
influence of this theory can be perceived in all linguistic programmes which make claims
about the influence of language on people’s perception of an aspect of ‘reality’. It has