LINGUIST List 5.1107

Tue 11 Oct 1994

Sum: Metaphors, Low German update

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Dan Alford, Summary: Non-Metaphor and Non-Arbitrary Claims
2. "Henk Wolf", Updated summary: Low German

Last month I posted the following message:
>>
Amethyst First Rider, Blackfoot, has insisted in a series of dialogues between
physicists, Native Americans and linguists that when Native Amercans are
speaking their own languages, they don't use metaphors; that it only sounds
like metaphor when translated into English.
 I believe her explanation for this would follow that discussed by other
American Indians in these Dialogues Between Indigenous and Western
Scientists sponsored by the Fetzer Institute: that whereas Western languages
tend to be built on an arbitrary relationship between the word and the world
(with exceptions showing up in what is labelled onomatopoeia, sound
symbolism, etc.), American Indian languages are just the reverse -- almost
ALL sounds/words are the result of an attempt to capture and portray in their
language the rhythms and vibrations of reality, with only a small remainder
(if any!) of exceptions, of arbitrary sounds.
 My own experience of Algonquian languages and their speakers suggests
this claim has merit. Have any other field-experienced linguists on indigenous
languages come across non-metaphor claims like this? Does this kind of
non-metaphor claim make sense to you, given experience with indigenous l
anguages you know? Same questions about the non-arbitrary explanation: has
anyone else come across this regarding indigenous languages? (At stake here,
of course, is a central assumption of modern linguistics: that in language the
relationship between word/sound and world is arbitrary.) I will post a summary
if there is enough interest.
>>
Since I had indeed opened two threads at once (non-metaphor, non-arbitrary),
the replies predictably focused on either one or the other or my linkage of the
two. And since this was rather complicated, I am posting (slightly edited
versions of) the replies rather than take snippets out of context.

 -------------- BEGIN REPLIES
 -----------------------------------------------------

1. OUTSIDER VS INSIDER JUDGEMENTS OF METAPHOR

You might be interested in a book by Dr. Mary Brennan called 'Word
Formation in British Sign Language' (Univ. of Stockholm, 1990). She
discusses the functions of metaphor in sign language, where a large
percentage of signs (especially in a 'classifier' category) have some type of
motivation, describing either the function or the form of a referent. Although
Brennan does (justifiably) see this motivation in terms of different kinds of
metaphor, it has been pointed out that this high form-meaning correlation in
human sign languages is not necessarily seen as metaphorical by native users.
For example, although we (i.e. hearing adults) immediately recognise a sign
for 'milk' as being a stylised representation of the movements made while
milking a cow, a deaf child growing up in the city may never have encountered
a real cow and therefore not see the metaphor, even though s/he may use the
sign on a daily basis.
 ----------------------- Mick Langenbach: mireille.langenbachdur.ac.uk
 -----------

Do you know of the following paper?:
 Sandor, A. (1986). Metaphor and belief.
 J. Anthropological Research, 42 (2), pp.101--122.
concerning: how we often wrongly interpret literal statements as metaphorical,
when they're by people with unfamiliar beliefs (e.g. people from different
cultures).
 ----------------------- John Barnden: jbarndencrl.nmsu.edu
 -----------------------

[These replies tend to indicate that Amethyst's claim as an insider should be
given a certain extra weight from the outset over the theories and opinions of
outsiders unfamiliar with the language.]

2. THE ALL-PERVASIVE ASPECT OF METAPHOR

The notion of metaphor is Aristotlean where object A shares certain character-
istics with B, therefore the word for A (which is assumed to have a unique
link between concept and sound) can be used for B, but because there is not
that unique link, he calls it metaphor. The debate between Platonists and
Aristotleans did not concern this unique link, but the nature of this link:
nature or nurture -- they merely assumed there is a link.
 Now in my view there is no unique link -- except in the mind of the
individual, of course. This implies that any word could be a metaphor for
any other word. If "metaphor" is nevertheless still a useful concept, it should
be viewed in terms of a deviance from a quantifiable frequency of word
usage (if such a positivistically sounding notion is at all possible). In other
words, if 99% of a speech population use "tree" for that leafy, branchy thing
ecophiles are so infatuated with, and biologists or linguists use the sound
sequence "tree" for a diagram on a piece of paper, then one could say the
second is a metaphor. In the mind of the linguist, who in his own life
experience works more with diagram-trees than with celled-trees, the
frequency of usage in his mind of the word "tree" is 'basically' a diagram,
and in his mind it is the celled-tree which is the metaphor! Howzat for
confusing issues!?
 So the point is, is the concept of metaphor still necessary to make
sense of language? Secondly, if it is necessary, is the frequency determined
socially, or individually?
 ----------------------- Jacques Steyn: STEYNJalpha.unisa.ac.za
 --------------------

[This reply posits an all-pervasiveness in metaphor, to which I will return in
my response, as well as pointing out that the existence of the so-called link
 was
never seriously questioned in ancient times.]

3. THE NOTION OF METAPHOR IS NON-INTUITIVE

Unfortunately, any proverbial man-in-the-street will tell you that he doesn't
 use
metaphor. Even undergraduate students taking psycholinguistics classes can be
hard to convince that they do use metaphor: "But an A *is* a higher grade than
a B!", "But the future *is* ahead!", etc. etc.
 Even if, in the languages you're looking at, all sounds/words are the
result of attempts to capture and portray the rhythms and vibrations of reality,
they will at least be metonymic, and the language will be representing an
object/concept/category in terms of some selected aspect.
 I may disagree with you on this one, but I do generally find your
postings interesting and useful. Thanks,
*---------------------- Joyce Tang Boyland (jtangcogsci.berkeley.edu) --------

[Like the previous reply, this one also posits pervasive metaphor, here of the
metonymic type. This reply also casts doubt on any insider intuitions
mentioned in the first group.]

4. THE NOTION OF ARBITRARINESS IS NON-INTUITIVE

I'm not a specialist of this question, but since I end up teaching intro
linguistics once in a while, I have to think about this once in a while.
The observation I'd like to make is that, very surprisingly (to me, at least),
arbitrariness seems to be a very non-intuitive concept to many non-linguists.
Despite the overwhelming and easily accessible evidence in favour of
arbitrariness for at least the great majority of vocabulary items, many
students take some time to be convinced (others get it immediately).
 I think, in this regard, it would be useful for you, if you really want
to work on this, to have a close look at what thinkers with a more 'naive'
worldview than that of the 20th century professional linguist have said on
this. I'd start with Plato's Kratylos (sp? in English) dialogue. My (rather
distant) memory of it finds it striking that despite the fact that Plato has
 many
of the modern arguments for arbitrariness at hand (in Kratylos's mouth if
memory is right), he still has Hermogenes (I think) arguing the opposite
position, and not being able to give up the idea that somehow the world
would make more sense if there were a non arbitrary link. (Note, as you can
see from my using Plato as my first example I'm not using 'naive' in any sort
of a condescending way). I think that this kind of literature, and the secondary
literature in the domain, could be relevant to bringing light on systems of
thought of e.g. Native American Indians about arbitrariness in their languages.
 ----------------------- Philip H. Miller: pmillerulb.ac.be
 -----------------------

[Similar to the previous reply, this reply posits that the notion of
 arbitrariness
must be carefully taught because it is non-intuitive for speakers.]

5. THE ALL-PERVASIVE ASPECT OF ARBITRARINESS

I see no evidence in Hupa, or in any other American Indian language I know
about, that the Saussurean assumption of arbitrariness is any less valid than
in English. Not that I think it is universally valid--it leaks in various
 important
ways in all languages. But I can't agree that the languages of American Indians
are in any way exceptional. In fact, to claim so seems to me to betray patently
racist (or hemispherist) assumptions, or a lack of understanding of linguistic
structure, or both.
 I think a much more profitable tack to take would be to carry out a trul
y
 comparative, empirical study of "sound-symbolism" that goes well beyond the
endless repetition of examples from baby talk or similarly marginal speech. A
guy named Nick Ciccotosto wrote a neat dissertation on this topic a couple of
years ago, which has been totally ignored (except apparently by me, and Cecil
Brown at NIU). You might want to look it up. Here's my abstract:

Ciccotosto, Nick. Ph.D., U. of Florida, 1991. Sound Symbolism in Natural
Languages. 301 pp. [C. challenges the "Saussurean assumption" that the
phonetic structure of morphemes is generally arbitrary. Using a large data
sample from "virtually all known language phyla," he tests a series of sound-
symbolic hypotheses on 16 items of "core vocabulary... routinely used by
linguists to trace genetic relationship among language phyla." The positive
results are "striking" and lead C. to believe that sound symbolism "must have
evolutionary adaptive value." Dissertation Abstracts International 53(2),
p. 541-A.] [Order # DA 9219164]
 ----------------------- Victor Golla: GOLLAVaxe.humboldt.edu
 -----------------

The theory is attractive because there are lots of interesting sound symbolisms,
but since American Indian langauges, like other languages make use of a
limited set of phonemes, I would question whether the phonological and
intonation systems are sufficiently complex to avoid significant arbitrariness.
I would like to see a systematic case study of Algonquian or any other language.
 ----------------------- Gary Palmer: gbpnevada.edu
 --------------------------------

> American Indian languages are just the reverse -- almost ALL sounds/words
> are the result of an attempt to capture and portray in their language the
> rhythms and vibrations of reality, with only a small remainder (if any!) of
> exceptions, of arbitrary sounds.
 I've heard this sort of assertion made (not by linguists!) of Vedic
Sanskrit -- that the phonological form of the word (every word) corresponds
to certain intrinsic properties of its sense. But I've not met anyone who could
tell me, for any given word, how or why.
*---------------------- And Rosta: ucleaarucl.ac.uk --------------------------

[Echoing group two, these replies assert an all-pervasiveness of arbitrariness,
enshrined as 'the Saussurean assumption of arbitrariness, pointing out even
in my example the unboundedness of the sounds of nature compared to any
language's limited phonetic set, However, in addition Golla, and Brugman
in the next section, point to other current viewpoints.]

6. WHAT'S THIS LINKAGE BETWEEN NON-METAPHOR AND
NON-ARBITRARY CLAIMS?

I'm curious about how a claim of non-arbitrariness of the sound/symbol
relationship extends to a claim that the language is non-metaphorical. At
first glance, it would seem that one could still use such a language
metaphorically. For instance, one can use the English onomatopoetic words
metaphorically, e.g., She whooshed into the room. Even though "whoosh" is
roughly onomatopoetic for a sound, it is used here to refer to a movement,
perhaps one that doesn't even literally sound like a "whoosh".
 This is a little off your query to linguist, but a propos of that, there
 is
often a claim, I think, of sacred languages, for instance, Hebrew or Sanskrit,
that the words bear some deep ontological connection to the things they
represent (e.g., Adam naming the animals in the Garden of Eden), and, of
course, a lot of belief in magic requires the same kind of mindset.
 ----------------------- Steve Helmreich (shelmreicrl.nmsu.edu)
 ------------------

Can you explain (to LINGUIST or to me) the relationship between the claims
of essential non-arbitrariness and the claim about non-metaphoricality? Is the
presumption that non-arbitrariness entails "literal" meaning? or what?
 PS: The relationship of non-arbitrariness that you identify as a basic
tenet of modern linguistics is explicitly denied by many "modern" linguists
such as Langacker, Haiman, all the "motivation" people. Why not use these
advocates instead of *simply* being adversarial? It's so Western to be
adversarial! ;-)
 George's later work on e.g. "image" metaphors has some relationship
to synesthesia, which certainly connects, in a positive way, with the
observations or presumptions of your work on Algonquian and on other
native American languages.
*-------------- Claudia Brugman: claudia.brugmanstonebow.otago.ac.nz ------

[These replies highlight my obvious lack of clarity in defining the relationship
of the two different claims made -- I was not claiming that the two always
necessarily are linked, just that I perceived the non-arbitrariness claim as
a possible explanation for the non-metaphor claim. I will return to this soon.]

*---------------------- END REPLIES -------------------------------------------

RESPONSE TO REPLIES:

I'd like to respond to points made in the replies, then add some new
information to more clearly describe the confluence of reasons which I feel
back up Ms. First Rider's claim.

"As outsiders, what are our credentials for judging insider knowledge?" Is
what we project as metaphorical when we look into some system as outsiders
actually felt to be metaphorical by users? Do native opinions count, especially
when they are already educated in our system as well and are making this
claim in a highly important cognitive forum? And it gets even stickier when
looking outside our own belief systems, as happens when we investigate
Native American languages: it almost comes down to 'whose grammar is
more correct -- English or Blackfoot?' -- are clouds 'animate' or 'inanimate'?
Of course, that gets even fuzzier when you realize that there are different
attribution systems of assigning 'animate' going on -- in the English system,
'animate' is a function of the object itself, whereas in Native American
languages I'm familiar with, 'animate' is a function of the relationship
between subject and object -- perhaps more like 'respect' than 'living' in our
understanding.

"The 100% (Trivial) All-Pervasiveness of Metaphor and Arbitrariness" --
I will quickly cave in and concede this one (and Saussure can rest peacefully!).
Even I won't question that the reality which a sign *represents* can never
capture the whole and is doomed to only point metonymically at it; nor will
I question the arbitrariness of a drastically limited phonetic set. I personally
can't even conceive of how anyone could seriously question that all-pervasive
and therefore trivial sense. It's the water our cognitive fish swim in, the
background noise we filter out.

However, that is not the sense most people have in mind when they talk
about metaphor -- a special something that stands out from the background
noise and is noticed. And *that's* the level at which Ms. First Rider's claim
is being made. Now I don't want to have to go superscript on you (and I don't
even know how I would do that over email), so let's just put the trivial
background sense away and work with the more salient sense while
examining Ms. First Rider's claim again: that when Native Americans are
speaking their own language, they don't use metaphors. As a director of
theatre she deals with the literary (most common) sense of metaphor on a
daily basis, is knowledgeable concerning literature in the English language,
and makes her claim confidently.

And we can say exactly the same about non-arbitrariness -- put away the
trival pervasive sense, look at the more salient sense, and then look at the
claim again: the intention to capture the rhythms and vibrations of reality
 and re-present them, an intention you will have to grant is not present in
the popular Western (Eurocentric) attitudes toward language, seems to be
matched by a felt sense of non-arbitrariness. Onomatopoeia gone mad, as
it were. A felt fit between word and world that sounds fanciful to trained
 linguists. On some relative scale, they have more of that and we have
much less, following the choice of arbitrariness made by our ancestors.

That reminds me of a story (true one) which may speak to Steve Helmreich's
query -- what's this 'sacred link' claim that comes up every once in a while?
When my friend Sakej Youngblood Henderson was visiting California from
Canada a few years ago, he told my class how the Mikmaqs of Nova Scotia
name [+habitual] trees: they name them for the sound the wind makes as it
blows through their leaves in the autumn, about an hour after sunset, when
the wind usually comes from a specific direction. That's interesting in itself
 -- a conscious linguistic/cultural pattern of naming known by tribal members.
But then it gets even more interesting: I asked him whether the name for the
trees would change if something happend and the sounds changed; he thought
about it and said yes. I said, that means if an elder remembers that when he
was growing up the name for those trees over there was such-and-such, but
now after 60 years of acid rain they're referred to as something slightly
different, this could be seen as two scientific markers concerning the effects
of acid rain over a half century; he thought about it and said yes. I said, we
can't do that with oak, pine, and mahogany! The intention and practice,
which I would correlate with their (what we would call) philosophical belief
that flux is the only constant, lets us see through their cultural mirror that
 our
own cultural practice is to make names stick no matter what -- once something
is properly named, it shouldn't be messed with, which has been lucky for
historical linguists tracing an 'object' through the changes of time. (Some of
you may remember this story from my response to Klang Association.)

This 'capturing the rhythms and vibrations of reality' idea shouldn't be all
that mysterious either -- it's the same strategy used by speakers of American
Sign Language, which shares other characteristics as well with Native
American languages: being much more verby and less nouny than English,
lacking a plethora of metaphors, etc. Perhaps another example will help.
Woody Morrison, a native Haida speaker, just dropped in my lap last year
that in Haida, the wind doesn't push the boat but pulls it; i.e., the wind
doesn't blow, it sucks. Which is exactly what meteorology tells us about the
relationship between a low-pressure and high-pressure area. Millennia ago
the Haida made a verb choice for the 'suck or pull' semantic domain, agreeing
with their observations and experience, while our ancestors chose 'blow or
push' -- agreeing, we must assume, with their observations and experiences,
which have since unfortunately been compromised by careful scientific
observation in a way the Haida choice hasn't.

Now -- if you aren't already confused (or clear) enough yet, here are some
more claims. A native speaker of Blackfoot has confirmed to me that he can
speak all day long without uttering a single noun -- and that this is the rule
rather than the exception. (He assures me, as do other Native Americans,
that this ultra-verbiness demands an incredibly high tolerance for ambiguity
in everyday conversation.) Since so many of our own metaphors are nouns,
a significant lack of nouns in Blackfoot automatically means fewer metaphor
candidates, and therefore mitigates toward Ms. First Rider's claim.

Another interesting claim is: I'm told that in their languages, the whole point
of speaking is always to describe what IS, not what should be or might
theoretically be, or is contrary to fact (counterfactuals or subjunctive) -- no
ideal, just real. So again we see a consistency with speaking non-metaphor-
ically if the point is describing WHAT IS as accurately as possible (not
what it's kind of like in some significant way). This interpretation is arguable
and not necessary, but at least points in the same direction as the others.

A final claim which I think adds a new dimension to the whole discussion is
something Sakej Henderson said one time: that he didn't understand why
white people thought language was supposed to be another pair of eyes,
describing primarily visual things. In the Algonquian world, language is
another pair of ears (as befits non-literate cultures). This goes along nicely
with work in NeuroLinguistic Programming (the other NLP!), which says
that people (also read cultures) are often primarily visual, auditory, or
kinaesthetic. Western cultures, literate for millennia, are primarily visual,
while indigenous cultures are primarily auditory.

So a fuller explanation or justification of the claim of non-metaphoricality
may be seen as a convergence of factors, including the following: 1) the claim
of non-trivial non-arbitrariness, of a conscious cultural intention regarding
naming; 2) the general lack of nouns, the form of the majority of our own
metaphors; 3) the auditory modality preference of the culture, seen in their
characterization of language as another pair of ears ('things' being more in
the realm of the eyes); and (4) the cultural preference for describing what is
rather than what might be or what ought to be (theorizing). When you add Ms.
First Rider's insider knowledge that we are not privy to, the claim demands
our serious attention as professionals.

Yes, this has been a long posting, but I felt this deserved a full treatment
since it seems to be such a professional hot button. Thanks to everyone who
has read to here. And thanks to all who replied, including those who were
simply interested in seeing any summary that might come out of it -- which
I hereby post. Okay, step right up -- who'll be the first to reply?

 -- Moonhawk (%->)

After I'd placed my summary on the judgement of Low and High German
sentences, several other people responded to my query. Thanks to everyone! I
now have judgements from 11 persons, of whom 6 have judged both the Low and
the High German sentences.

What follows is a summary of the responses I got. For the reader's ease,
I'll first list the sentences concerned:

(1) - Low German
He verloor sien Sloetel, as ...
he lost his key when
 a. he gueng 'n Kopp Koffie halen
 he went a cup coffee get
 b. he gueng 'n Kopp Koffie to halen
 to
 c. he 'n Kopp Koffie halen gueng
 d. he 'n Kopp Koffie to halen gueng
 e. he 'n Kopp Koffie gueng halen
 f. he 'n Kopp Koffie gueng to halen

(2) - High German
Er verlor seinen Schluessel, als ...
he lost his key when
 a. er ging eine Tasse Kaffee holen
 he went a cup coffee get
 b. er ging eine Tasse Kaffee zu holen
 to
 c. er eine Tasse Kaffee holen ging
 d. er eine Tasse Kaffee zu holen ging
 e. er eine Tasse Kaffee ging holen
 f. er eine Tasse Kaffee ging zu holen

I think it's most interesting to see how one specific person has judged this
total of sentences, so I've made a little matrix. The first column gives the
sentence numbers, the other columns are the judgements for one informant.
The indications OK, ?, ??, * indicate respectively grammatical, doubt,
marginal, ungrammatical.

S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
1a * * ? * * OK *
1b * * * OK * ?? *
1c OK OK OK OK OK OK OK
1d * OK OK OK * * *
1e * * * * * ?? *
1f * * * * * * *

S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
2a * * * * * * * * * *
2b * * OK * * OK * OK ? *
2c OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK
2d * OK * OK * * * * * *
2e * * * * ?? * ?? * ? ??
2f * * OK * * * * * * *

These people are speakers of the following dialects:
1 Elmshorn (Holstein)
2 Hamburg area
3 Osnabrueck area
4 North Sea Isles
5 Itzehoe (Holstein)
6 Hamburg
7 Bonn
8 Braunschweig (Low Saxony)
9 LG-HG Border area
10 Hessisch of Taunus (north of Frankfurt)
11 Bredstedt area (Schleswig)

Finally, I'd like to ask speakers of other German dialects to give their
judgements.

Regards,
Henk Wolf
H.A.Y.Wolfstud.let.ruu.nl