LINGUIST List 5.1117

Thu 13 Oct 1994

Disc: Metaphor in Native American Languages

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. , metaphor
2. John Barnden, metaphor in Native American languages: some comments
3. Aaron Fox, Re: 5.1107 Sums: Metaphors

In LINGUIST 5-1107 Moonhawk (Dan Alford) writes:

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.

This argument assumes that other languages than English, and Blackfoot
in particular, share the tendency he asserts of English to base more
metaphors on nouns than on verbs: an assumption for which I see no
warrant in his posting.

(By the way, "mitigates" should be "militates". And, in terms of air
pressure, both "push/blow" and "pull/suck" are appropriate
perceptually-based descriptions of the motion of air masses from areas
of greater density to areas of lesser density. Neither our linguistic
ancestors' "choices" nor the Haidas' ancestors' have been
compromised.)

 Mark A. Mandel
 Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200
320 Nevada St. : Newton, MA. 02160, USA : markdragonsys.com

This document was dictated with DragonDictate for Windows.

At the risk of prolonging an already-summarized discussion, I can't resist
making some brief comments in response the claims at the end of Moonhawk's
 recently
posted summary concerning non-use of metaphors in Native American languages:

> So a fuller explanation or justification of the claim of non-metaphoricality
> may be seen as a convergence of factors, including the following: ....
>
> (2) the general lack of nouns, the form of the majority of our own
> metaphors; ...... and
>
> (4) the cultural preference [on the part of Nat. Amers.] for describing what
 is
> rather than what might be or what ought to be (theorizing).

Moonhawk also says: "so many of our own metaphors are nouns".

Comments:

(1) What about the view, popular in some quarters (including cognitive
linguistics and my own field, viz. artificial intelligence), that metaphors
aren't *words* (/phrases/sentences), but conceptual views? In that light, what
sense does (2) make?

(2) What's the evidence for (an intelligible reconstrual of) the claim in (2)
that the majority of our own metaphors take the form of nouns? Is Moonhawk
being misled by a possible preponderance of nouns in simple *examples* of
 metaphor
that for historical reasons have tended to be used in treatises on metaphor?

(3) What's the connection between metaphor and not "describing what is
rather than what might be or what ought to be (theorizing)"? Although
no doubt metaphors are used deontically/counterfatually/..., as any
form of language can, it seems self evident that very many statements
about what *is* are metaphorical and very many metaphorical statements
are about what *is*. What's the evidence for a bias towards the
deontic/couterfactual/... in metaphor? I don't immediately recall
claims of such a bias in the many articles on metaphor (in whatever
field) that I've read.

(4) My comments above are to be understood in the light of my own orientation
towards metaphor in mundane discourse as opposed to drama, poetry, etc.
However, even if the present discussion is to be confined to the latter -- as
Moonhawk seems to want -- I still want to pose the above questions.


John Barnden
Computing Research Laboratory
New Mexico State University
Box 30001, Dept. CRL
Las Cruces, NM 88003-8001.

jbarndencrl.nmsu.edu
(505) 646-6235
FAX: (505) 646-6218

Message 3: Re: 5.1107 Sums: Metaphors

 In reply to Alford's compelling and lavish posting on metaphors,
arbitrariness, and such, I would suggest that the big dichotomies at work
here (the Western/Non-Western distinction, the Native
American/Non-Native-American distinction, the intuition/science
distinction, the experience/reality distinction, or the oral/literate
distinction) are themselves something of an ideological obstacle course in
relation to these issues. Evidence and intuition combine for me to suggest
that the underside of English (he said metaphorically, hereafter marked
with [!]), the side which we bracket off (!) in the analytic ghetto (!) of
"poetics," is just as dense (!) a blend (!) of historical and experiential
non-arbitrariness and arbitrariness as Native American languages are so
frequently purported to be. The implications of this for scientific
linguistics, with its over-focus (!) on arbitrariness, are nothing short
(!) of radical (!), given the substantial (!) importance of English
evidence and English-speakers' intuitions in the formulation (!) of
contemporary linguistic theories and ideologies.

 Along these lines, then, I post in order to plug (!) a relatively
under-cited (!) body (!) of work which goes (!) to the heart of these
problems (!). The linguist Roger Williams Wescott spent (!) a career
assaying (!) the problem of phonosemic non-arbitrariness, in English and
Bini in particular (!), and from both synchronic and diachronic
perspectives (!). A collection of his papers is available (or was) as:
*Sound and Sense: Linguistic Essays on Phonosemic Subjects,* (1980, Jupiter
Press). The papers are delightful and literate, suitable (!) for teaching,
and great for thinking with and against (!) for native English speakers
especially. If the book is not available to you, please let me know and I
will photocopy (!) some representative (!) pieces and mail them to you,
because I wish to encourage a wider (!) audience (!) for this work (!?).

 Also, I note that Hinton/Nichols/Ohala's new *Sound Symbolism*
collection, a defense (!) of non-arbitrariness in NA languages esp., is
out from Cambridge in the current (!) catalog. Finally, although I have
heard it is out of print, Chicago has a few thousand copies left of Mark
Johnson's important contribution to this topic, *The Body in the Mind,*
(1987). Finally, if I may do some altruistic self-promotion, Steven Feld
(who turned me on [!] to Wescott) and I have a piece in the forthcoming
*Annual Review of Anthropology* entitled "Music and Language* which surveys
(!) the past 20 years of work on that particular interface (!) (with no
claims [!] to completeness, just salience [!] for an anthropological
readership). In that piece, we raise (!) some of the arbitrariness issues
at length (!).

After all, (!) what's a meta for?

 Aaron A. Fox
 Univ. of Texas at Austin, Anthropology
 Univ. of Washington, Anthropology (from 12/15)
 aafccwf.cc.utexas.edu