Semantic Structures in Northwestern California and the Sapir‐Whorf Hypothesis1

Abstract

T HE Indian tribes of northwestern California constitute a well recognized culture area, first defined by A. L. Kroeber. groups which best typify the northwestern California culture the Yurok, the Karok, and the Hupa; slightly peripheral the Smith River Indians (Tolowa), the Wiyot, and the Chilula. nonlinguistic culture of the area is quite homogeneous, so that Kroeber felt justified in stating (1925:5) that The Yurok shared this civilization in identical form with their neighbors, the Hupa and Karok. adjacent Tolowa, Wiyot and Chilula adhere to the same culture in every essential trait. Linguistically, however, the area is probably as heterogeneous as any of comparable size in the world. Yurok and Wiyot related to the Algonkian languages of eastern and central North America; but despite their geographical proximity, it is far from clear that they more closely related to each other than either is to Algonkian (Teeter 1964: 189). Karok is Hokan, but only remotely related to its nearest Hokan neighbors, Shasta and Chimariko. Hupa and Smith River both Athabascan, but the division of Pacific Coast Athabascan languages into two groups falls between them, so that the closest relatives of Hupa extend southward into Central California, while Smith River has its closest kin in southwestern Oregon. paradoxical combination of cultural unity with linguistic diversity in other areas has been commented on by anthropologists-notably in the Southwestern United States where Pueblo groups with similar cultures speak diverse languages. northwestern California case was cited by Sapir (1921:214) as illustrating his point that and culture not intrinsically related. He noted that speakers of the clearly unified Athabascan language family adapted themselves, evidently with considerable speed, to four very different culture areas of North America. The Hupa Indians, he wrote, are very typical of the culture area to which they belong. Culturally identical with them the neighboring Yurok and Karok. There is the liveliest tribal intercourse between the Hupa, Yurok, and Karok, so much so that all three generally attend an important religious ceremony given by any one of them. It is difficult to say what elements in their combined culture belong in origin to this tribe or that, so much at one they in communal action, feeling and thought. But their languages not merely alien to each other; they belong to three of the major American linguistic groups ... 2 Compare this with Sapir's more famous statement, the basis of the SapirWhorf (or Whorfian) hypothesis (1929:209):