Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!ptsfa!ames!husc6!rutgers!sri-unix!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: words order in English and Japanese
Message-ID: <542@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>
Date: 17 Jan 88 03:26:56 GMT
References: <1671@russell.STANFORD.EDU> <142@blic.BLI.COM>
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA
Lines: 62

In article <1671@russell.STANFORD.EDU>,
nakashim@russell.STANFORD.EDU (Hideyuki Nakashima) writes:

> Now, English (probably I can say Latin) speaking people are basically
> hunters, while Japanese are basically farmers.  Hunting is a real-time
> job while farming is not.

There are ploughed fields in England which have been under the plough for
3,000 years.  In the rest of Europe, agriculture is even older.  If we
are to talk about English specifically, word order in Anglo-Saxon (sixth
century on) wasn't all that different from Modern English, and that was
an agricultural society.

Besides, what about the women?  Even when hunting was a major economic
activity in Europe, the women weren't out hunting.  Their pursuits were
no more "real-time" than farming, and the transmission of language was
under their control.  Don't forget half the human race!  And what about
fishing?  And what about bragging afterwards?  When hunting, one says
very little (you don't want the game to hear!).

> I combined those two observations: In real-time communication,
> possibility of misunderstanding is fatal.  If you say "DON'T touch
> it", there is no possibility that the hearer try to touch something.
> But if the order were "it touch NOT" which is the case in Japanese,
> the hearer may touch it when he hears upto "it touch".

Think not that negatives in English come first always!

It doesn't seem likely that "possibility of misunderstanding is fatal"
to a higher degree in hunting.  Canine and lupine packs typically fail
nine times out of ten, and I don't expect my ancestors did much better.
The anthropologists tell us that in hunter/gather groups hunting supplies
less than half the total amount of food.  Make an incautious move while
you're hunting deer, and you go hungry.  Make the wrong move while
you're trying to shift a farm bull from one paddock to another and
you're dead.

> In farming, on the other hand, there are lots of time.  Planning and
> cooperation among people is more important than real-time-ness.  That
> will allow development of language which fits to express very delicate
> things, like person's mood.  (I think this is why Japanese has very
> complicated honorific system.) 

Hmm.  I've just been reading a book about baboons.  Seems that they
have a complex system of vocal signals which can express mood quite
clearly, but practically nothing else.  Forgive the ignorance of a
foreigner, but is it not the case that the Japanese honorifics are
controlled by the status of the speaker, the hearer, and the people
spoken about, rather than by what the speaker happens to feel?  The
point of politeness, after all, is to *conceal* one's feelings, so
that people can co-operate without having to like each other.

> I don't think this explains all the difference of language features,
> but at least I find it interesting.  Any comments?

Frankly, I can't see that it explains *any* differences.
How do you account for the word order differences between English and German?
How do you explain the honorific pronouns in Samoan, absent in Maaori?

A good test case for your idea might be South American languages.
Did the agricultural societies speak differently structured languages
from the others?