Research Proposal

Area: Linguistic Relativity (Whorfian Hypothesis)

Does the language we speak shape or influence the way we understand or see the world? We know from our experience and observations that different languages express the same idea or talk about the same physical notion in a slightly different way. One language may require adding extra information such as gender, number or tense, but another may express the same core idea without such extra information. Further the structure of a language may impose certain features which can not be naturally justified. This topic, commonly known as Linguistic Relativity (Whorf 1956, Lucy 1992) cuts across the fields of linguistics, psychology and cognitive sciences. The idea was originally put forward by Benjamin Lee Whorf in the 1930s, and its basic premise is that the structures of language influence the way speakers think about reality. In essence it states that human natural languages are a kind of classificatory systems that classify experience and the outer world at large, and that different languages do so in differing manners. According to linguistic relativists the picture of the world depicted by our languages becomes different according to our linguistic input. It is the same world but viewed differently with certain aspects being highlighted more than others and being given differential salience.

The present study will be an attempt to test the validity of this proposal by contrastively studying the pronominal systems put forward by Urdu, the national language of Pakistan, and English. It is a type of comparative study which aims to find similarities and differences of perception that may owe their origin to the structures of the language. The study purposes to find out how, if at all, the patterns of thinking of Urdu and English speakers differ from each other, and if these differences are in part attributable to their languages.

It appears that Urdu and English employ very different models with regards to the pronominal system. English language provides about three different pronouns to talk about third person, one for second person and two for the first person. However Urdu language supports one pronoun for third person, three for second person and two for the first person. The differences in gender and number are marked by other inflections within the sentence. Further, Urdu 3rd person differentiates between a nominative and oblique case, and has also got an embedded notion of spatial proximity with reference to the position of speaker and exhibits this by using two separate varieties of the pronoun. One may ask as to whether these extensive deictic differences found in English and Urdu lead to any cognitive differences in understanding or perception. Urdu division of second person into three separate categories forces a speaker to select some type of social status marker, thus denying him to be neutral. Similarly the concept of third person with an embedded proximity notion with reference to the speaker may invoke different relational structures than those of English third person. (Boroditsky, Lera 2001)

The following table, based on an English model, provides a complete paradigm of almost all possible variations in Urdu pronouns.

The table puts in contrast Urdu forms against English and helps in extracting the following, apparently obvious, differences in English and Urdu pronoun system. In Urdu:

• 1. There’s a difference between the Nominative and Oblique forms of subject.

  2. The possessive and possessive adjective forms are the same.

  3. There is no reflexive form.

  4. There are at least three different layers of 2^nd person pronouns.

  5. There is no gender distinction between he, she and it.

  6. The nominative form for he, she, it, and they is the same.

  7. There is a distinction with regards to spatiotemporal proximity for 3^rd person.

As is evident in the table above, Urdu second person pronominal system shows major differences when compared to English second person. Unlike the English one form you, which does not take account of number, gender, social status of the interlocutors and the social settings, Urdu second person has got three varieties (three in nominative case, five including oblique) which accommodate the above mentioned variables. But all those varieties do not make Urdu second person easy to understand, rather add more complexity to it. In essence there is an embedded hierarchy in these three forms. Starting from bottom ţoo implies that the audience is socially inferior and younger in age. It is often derogatory and an insult when spoken for an equal status or elder audience. However, it is also used for a very familiar and intimate friend, one’s beloved, and for God. ţum is the informal and familiar you where the audience is more or less of equal status. It can also be used as a plural. The third variety aap is perhaps the most complex. It is not only used as both singular and plural, but also as honorific third person⁵. Normally it is formal and deferential. One is not expected to use any other variety for a senior member of one’s family, one’s superiors in an office or the socially superior audience.

All these varieties have an embedded social status marker with reference to the relationship between the interlocutors. Please note that this status marker is not just confined to second person only. The third person is also marked. Consider the following question by the son.

Father: کل میرا بھائی آ رہا ہے۔ (my brother is coming tomorrow)

Son: کیا وہ اکیلے آ رہے ہیں؟ (Is he coming alone?)

• • • • kya vo əkelay a’a rəhay ħei.

      • Question / pronoun-3^rd + Nominative Case/ alone+ Number-plural / come / Progressive+Number-plural + Gender-Masculine/ is + Number-plural/

Here a plural construction is used as if many people are coming, but every one (among the interlocutors) knows that it is an honorific plural. Were it his cousin coming tomorrow the son would have used a singular construction.

• • • • کیا وہ اکیلا آ رہا ہے؟

      • kya vo əkela a’a rəha hay (Is he coming alone?)

      • Question / pronoun-3^rd + Nominative Case/ alone+ Number-singular / come / Progressive + Number-singular + Gender-Masculine/ is + Number-signluar/

It is obvious is language is imposing a kind of social structure on its users. Speakers do not have a choice to be neutral, but are forced to select one of the available options. Not selecting a proper social status marker will give the wrong impression.

Urdu third person pronominal system is completely opposite to English system. English supports at least four varieties he/she/it/they which make a distinction of gender and number. Urdu differentiates between the nominative and the oblique case. It would not be very wrong to say that Urdu has got only one third person pronoun. But it differentiates between the spatially proximal and distant third person. Further there’s no distinction between the singular and plural in the nominative case but the oblique cases are distinct. In total there are six varieties, consisting of three pairs ye/vo, is/us and in/un. Only the first pair ye/vo is nominative and can be used both as singular and plural. The other two pairs are oblique and second pair is the plural form of the first. The distinction between the two elements of each pair is that of spatial proximity with reference to the speaker. The first element ye/is/in denote that the person or object indicated is spatially closer to the speaker, whereas the second element vo/us/un denotes that the person or object indicated is either away from the speaker or is absent. It is evident from all these forms that the spatial location of the third person is embedded into the pronoun system, making it completely impossible to disregard this spatial notion. This makes Urdu third person as much spatially deictic as much are the English demonstratives this and that. In essence Urdu does not have any indigenous third person pronominal forms. These are the demonstratives which are being used pronominally.

Urdu language and culture is quite status conscious as demonstrated by the second person pronominal system. This also extends into third person. Though no indigenous deferential forms for third person are available, the deference, once again based on the social status of the third person with reference to the speaker, is added by using plural construction for singular third person. Where a singular verb-agreement will be used for third person of socially equal or lower status, a plural agreement will be used to denote that the third person is either elder or socially superior. Once again the selection is not governed by linguistic rules but by the relative nature of the social status of the speaker and the third person.

Arguably, Urdu language is carrying certain features of the social structure of the society in it. Historically, the language may have started to support these features because of their widespread existence in the society. However, as the situations stands now, it is the language that is carrying social values in its purely linguistic structures. At a time when the Pakistani society is going through a considerable social change whose reflections can be found in the usage of language, it’ll be ideal to study how the social change is affecting the language and in what ways the language is resisting to it

In its aim the research will focus on one or more of the following questions.

• • Second Person Pronoun:

    1. How can a multilayered vs single layered second person pronoun system influence users’ perception of the second person?

• 1. Further, what sort of difficulties one would come across while learning to use other.

• • Third Person Pronoun:

    1. Does having the same pronoun for material or non material objects and humans and non humans in any way influence the perception of the third party?

    2. Further, how can adding the notion of spatiotemporal proximity to the third person pronoun affect their perception as opposed to where no such information is embedded in?

    3. Does the concept of third person with an embedded proximity notion with reference to the speaker invoke different relational structures than those of English third person?

• 1. What sort of problems / differences can there be between two systems where one has got different forms for humans and non humans, but the other does not make any such distinction.

Select Bibliography:

• • Borditsky, Lera, (2002) Linguistic Relativity, published in Galley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Article Number 0056

  • Boroditsky, Lera (2001) Does language shape thought? Mandarin and English speaker’s conception of time. Cognitive Psychology 43(1): 1-22

  • Carroll, J.B. 1964. Language and thought. Englewood-Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

  • Lucy, J (1992) Language Diversity and Thought. Cambridge, CUP

  • Lucy, J (199) Grammatical Categories and Cognition. Cambridge, CUP

  • Sapir, E. (1958): Culture, Language and Personality (ed. D. G. Mandelbaum). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press

  • Schmidt, Ruth L (2001) Urdu: An essential grammar. London: Routledge.

  • Slobin, D (1996) From ‘thought and language to ‘thinking for speaking’ in J Gumperz & Levinson (ed)

  • Talmy, L (1995) Lexicalisation Patterns: Semantic Structure in Lexical Forms. In T Shopen (ed) Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Vol II. Cambridge, CUP

  • Whorf, B. L. (1956): Language, Thought and Reality (ed. J. B. Carroll). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press