Query Re: the great eskimo language hoax

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Thu Nov 25 16:39:28 PST 1999


Kelley,

Do your sources tell you anything about Whorf on the Pacific Northwest languages and fish. I have heard (but can't cite my source) that Whorf made the grotesque claim that those Indians fished because they had so many words for fish! So do they have so many words? And did Whorf make this claim?

What I believe is called the Whorf-Sapir [?] thesis is a great-great granddaddy of various current efforts to make discourse a cause rather than an effect of human social relations.

Carrol



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