Discussion Details
| Title: | Languages without Past Tense and the Concept of Past Time |
| Submitter: | Harriet Taber |
| Description: | I learned in Cultural Anthropology class (taught by a cultural
anthropologist) today that: 1. Many human languages have no way of encoding the concept of past time (e.g., no past tense, no adverbs denoting previous time), 2. Speakers of such languages have no 'linguistic concept of past time,' and 3. As a consequence of this lexical gap, the speakers of these languages have absolutely no concept of past time. (These averred facts were related to practices of ancestor worship.) The professor, when asked who precisely we are talking about, said that the above 3 claims are true of 'indigenous languages' and their speakers; when asked which indigenous languages, he replied 'Native American languages,' and, when pushed, 'Native American languages in the Southwest,' and, when pushed still further, 'Apache.' As an afterthought, he also added, 'and the languages of Papua New Guinea.' I know that a grammar may refer to past time using aspect morphemes (e.g., perfective), but I am not aware of any human language that does not have a way to refer to past time (claim 1); I am also not aware of any human beings that do not understand the concept of past time (claim 3) no matter how their grammar and lexicon work. Can a linguist who specializes in an Apache language or any of the languages in Papua New Guinea please confirm, disconfirm, and explain what this professor might be talking about? Eagerly awaiting your reply! |
| Date Posted: | 03-Oct-2010 |
| Linguistic Field(s): |
Sociolinguistics
Syntax Anthropological Linguistics |
| LL Issue: | 21.3873 |
| Posted: | 03-Oct-2010 |
