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From: scw@cepu.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.ai,net.nlang
Subject: Re: Natural Language Deficiencies in Hopi.
Message-ID: <402@cepu.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 26-Oct-84 15:17:38 EST
Article-I.D.: cepu.402
Posted: Fri Oct 26 15:17:38 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 28-Oct-84 06:24:07 EST
References: <12582@sri-arpa.UUCP> <12300003@uicsl.UUCP> <194@oliveb.UUCP> <619@gloria.UUCP> <801@aplvax.UUCP> <2479@rochester.UUCP>
Reply-To: scw@cepu.UUCP (Stephen C. Woods)
Organization: VA Wadsworth Med. Center; LA CA
Lines: 25
Xref: 2205 1942
Summary: 

In article <2479@rochester.UUCP> gary@rochester.UUCP (Gary Cottrell) writes:
>> <>
>> It is well-known that the Hopi (American Indian) language only has a
>> present tense, there are no past or future tenses for their verbs.
>> Surely this is a language deficiency.
>
>The same is true of AMSLAN (AMerican Sign LANguage), but whether you are
>talking about the past or future[...]. I'll bet there's something similar
>in Hopi.

Ditto with Vietnamese (and I think with all the dialects of Chinese)
tense is not indicated with the verb but by adding a word to the
sentence indicating relative time (I see him. I <past> see him. I
<future> see him.) one could argue that the <time> indicator is
actually transforming the tense of the verb. But verbs take no
case/gender/person either.  This is not a deficiency, just a different
structure. An inverse is the fact that English does not differentiate
'elder {sister,brother}' vs 'younger sibling' or 'my fathers elder
brother' vs 'my fathers younger brother' this is not a deficiency in
English but rather a difference in emphasis (Vietnamese cultural values
vs English/Americian cultural values).
-- 
Stephen C. Woods (VA Wadsworth Med Ctr./UCLA Dept. of Neurology)
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