The different grammars create the different ideas, maybe we can further understand it with the following words:
“So, for example, according to Whorf, whereas English speakers conceive of time as a linear, objective sequence of events encoded in a system of past, present, and future tenses(for example, ‘He ran’ or ‘He will run’), or a discrete number of days as encoded in cardinal numerals (for example, ten days), the Hopi conceive of it as intensity and duration in the analysis and reporting of experience (for example, wari=’He ran’ or statement of fact, warikni=’He ran’ or statement of fact from memory). Similarly ‘They stayed ten day’s becomes in Hopi ‘They stayed until the eleventh day’ or ‘They left after the tenth day’.” [15]
“Whorf insists that the English language binds English speakers to a Newtonian view of objectified time, neatly bounded and classifiable, ideal for record-keeping, time–saving, clock-punching, that cuts up reality into ‘afters’ and ‘untils’, but is incapable of expressing time as a cyclic, unitary whole. By contrast, the Hopi language does not regard time as measurable length, but as a relation between two events in lateness, a kind of ‘eventing’ referred to in an objective way (as duration) and in a subjective way (as intensity). ‘Nothing is suggested about time [in Hopi] except the perpetual “getting later” of it’ writes Whorf. Thus it would be very difficult, Whorf argues, for an English and a Hopi physicist to understand each other’s thinking, given the major differences between their languages. Despite the general translatability from one language to another, there will always be an incommensurable residue of untranslatable culture associated with the linguistic structures of any given language.” [16]
We can see the best example in the above to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and could better understand how language influence thought. But, we may make another hypothesis that if the Hopi want to learn or to understand the English expression of time (the time conceptions) first they must learn the English language structures and grammar. Maybe it is a complement for them to build up the time system, and further more the Hopi could view the time in a new way. Through studying the foreigner language they can develop their own theory on only in time. So does our Chinese students learning English language.
3. Linguistic Logics of Chinese and English
The thinking styles of the East and the West are different: Easterners tend to seek sameness from difference while Westerners are likely to find difference from sameness. To a certain degree, true in that the thinking styles and viewing angles between the East and the West is different. As a matter of fact, as early as the 19th century, the German Materialistic philosopher Feuerbach(费尔巴哈)pointed out that “Easterners tend to neglect discrepancy in consistency while Westerners tend to ignore consistency in discrepancy.” [17]
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