Chapter 31
Languages and Logic
Benjamin L. Whorf
In English, the sentences ‘I pull the branch aside’ and ‘I have an extra toe on my
foot’ have little similarity. Leaving out the subject pronoun and the sign of the
present tense, which are common features from requirements of English syntax,
we ma ysa ythat no similarit yexists. Common, and even scientific, parlance
would sa ythat the sentences are unlike because the yare talking about things
which are intrinsicall yunlike. So Mr. Ever yman, the natural logician, would be
inclined to argue. Formal logic of an older type would perhaps agree with him.
If, moreover, we appeal to an impartial scientific English-speaking observer,
asking him to make direct observations upon cases of the two phenomena to
seeiftheymaynothavesomeelementofsimilaritywhichwehaveoverlooked,
he will be more than likel yto confirm the dicta of Mr. Ever yman and the logi-
cian. The observer whom we have asked to make the test ma ynot see quite e ye
to eye with the old-school logician and would not be disappointed to find him
wrong. Still he is compelled sadl yto confess failure. ‘‘I wish I could oblige
you,’’ he says, ‘‘but try as I may, I cannot detect any similarity between these
phenomena.’’
B ythis time our stubborn streak is aroused; we wonder if a being from Mars
would also see no resemblance. But now a linguist points out that it is not nec-
essar yto go as far as Mars. We have not yet scouted around this earth to see if
its man ylanguages all classif ythese phenomena as disparatel yas our speech
does. We find that in Shawnee these two statements are, respectively,ni-l’yawa-
’ko-n-aandni-l’yawa-’ko-yite(theyhere denotesthas in ‘thin’ and the apos-
trophe denotes a breath-catch). The sentences are closel ysimilar; in fact, the y
differ onl yat the tail end. In Shawnee, moreover, the beginning of a construc-
tion is generall ythe important and emphatic part. Both sentences start with
ni-(‘I’), which is a mere prefix. Then comes the reall yimportant ke yword,
l’yawa, a common Shawnee term, denoting a forked outline, like figure 31.1, no.
- The next element,-’ko,wecannotbesureof,butitagreesinformwitha
variantofthesuffix-a’kwor-a’ko,denotingtree,bush,treepart,branch,or
anything of that general shape. In the first sentence,-n-means ‘b yhand action’
and ma ybe either a cansation of the basic condition (forked outline) manuall y,
an increase of it, or both. The final -ameansthatthesubject(‘I’)doesthisaction
to an appropriate object. Hence the first sentence means ‘I pull it (something
like branch of tree) more open or apart where it forks.’ In the other sentence,
the suffix -yitemeans ‘pertaining to the toes,’ and the absence of further suffixes
FromLanguage, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf, ed. J. B. Carroll (Cam-
bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1956), 233–245. Reprinted with permission.