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Conceptual Implications of an Indian Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

D. Demetracopoulou Lee
D. Demetracopoulou Lee*
Affiliation:
Pomona College, Claremont, California
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Extract

It has been said that a language will delineate and limit the logical concepts of the individual who speaks it. Conversely, a language is an organ for the expression of thought, of concepts and principles of classification. True enough, the thought of the individual must run along its grooves; but these grooves, themselves, are a heritage from individuals who laid them down in an unconscious effort to express their attitude toward the world. Grammar contains in crystallized form the accumulated and accumulating experience, the Weltanschauung of a people.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , January 1938 , pp. 89 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1938

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References

Notes

1 For example, for the verb to come there is the pair of stems wir- and wer-; to swallow has the stems pira-, peril-; to wash: yuqa-, yoqu-; to chop: kup-, kop-.

2 The phonetics have been simplified throughout, in conformity with the non-technical nature of this paper.

3 The -kilake (hearsay knowledge of the distant past) is affixed to all verbal phrases coming from myths. In translating, I shall give only the past tense and shall not add the implied, “it is said,”

4 This relationship between aching and desiring is present also in colloquial English. We say that we are “aching to do it”; we are “dying for a ride”; we “crave companionship.”

5 I translate eleu as to not-do, or to not-be; actually, it means: to not. It is not a negative statement, but, rather, a positive assertion of negation.

6 Some of the following examples have been numbered so as to facilitate subsequent reference.

7 The connection between similarity and appearance is thoroughgoing in the Wintu language. The usual word for like, or a similar one -oqti- means etymologically: surface-of-the-identical. It has been formed from uqa, oq-: identical, and -ti: side of, surface of, and might be taken to mean: the appearance of the identical.