 Okay, so if I can welcome everybody to the linguistics department for the fifth week of time and today we are very fortunate to have somebody with expertise that we don't usually find certainly I don't know of anybody else in London who's done the kind of work that Vera is doing and I think some really really interesting perspectives from from the research. So Vera da Silva Sina from the University of East Anglia, Vera is finishing up her PhD research which she's been doing in Brazil. She has extensive fieldwork experience working on indigenous languages from a number of different groups in Brazil including in the Xingu National Park working with the Auechi and others in Amazonia and also amongst groups on the border between Brazil and Peru. So she's going today to tell us about her research project that is involved looking at the expression of temporality and time in several of the languages that she's been working with. Those of you who have done any linguistics will have come across this as being a very famous chestnut particularly in the dimension of the so-called superior wall flight hypothesis and you know warf's claims about temporal expression in our language will be. Those of you in descriptive linguistics that's what we'll be talking about this week right. So Vera's research is going to be really relevant to us. My understanding is that we have a film and then Vera's going to talk to you about the material that's in the film and then what have the usual question and answer period towards the end of it. So over to you. Okay thank you. Thank you Peter for being here one more time and so I think some of you already know my work before but it's not the same video we showed in the last time and this is just a documentary about what is time and culture yeah so let's see if you like and then we can talk about it for a screen yeah. All over the world people think about and talk about time and place events in time. The way this is done is not the same in all cultures. In our culture we are used to thinking in terms of kind is this the same for everyone. I'm going to show you what the world can express in the languages and cultures of three indigenous communities of Brazil. What's not planned then? Time is something that we all experience and mostly we think about it and talk about it in terms of the fast on journey to life but it is really true for all people. That's the question I set out to explore by finding out indigenous cultures of Brazil on the spot going on to talk about life. What is time? Actually nobody knows and scientists disagree to some very basic questions. Does time go direction? Can we say that time exists apart from our experience of it? Do past, present and future exist? Does everything have its time location in space? Well if so many scientists don't know the answers to these questions I won't even try to answer them because my own question is difficult enough. My question is does everyone around the world think and talk about time in the same way? To answer this question I am going to take you on a journey to my home country. Let's look at the way we are accustomed to thinking about time. Let's start by thinking about how we experience events. Every event has a duration, has its own place in a sequence of events. What's more, we can orient ourselves in time just as we orient ourselves in space. So for example, in space I can say that I am in this building and this room. In the same way I can say that I am speaking to them. I did something again tomorrow. I can precisely look at the time of an event and say that my birthday is with us. Also enabling us to measure time intervals, years, months, days, hours, all these ways of thinking about and talking about time are second nature to us. But is this the way that everyone in every culture thinks about time? How time is organized and conceptualized? Let's see who are they and where they live. People living in the tropical forest in the states of Acre and southern Amazonas, close to the Andes on the border of Acre. They speak the hearty language that belongs to the Pan-Bilbustic family, are also known as Cachinaua. The population in Brazil is approximately 12,000, including individuals who are living in the cities, and in Peru is about 2,500. They live in 100 villages in 11 different reservations, distributed across all municipalities. Through them, they show Marçal da Maturum and Santa Rosa, in Paris. The community that we are working with lives in the village of Andeja de Pousa, located at the Poulos River. The population of these villages is approximately 120 people, including adults, keep many aspects of their culture secret, but they are happy to share with us some other aspects, such as how they talk about and understand time. We are especially grateful for the help of Dr. Joaquim Casinalo, the first doctor in universities from the village, who is working with us. Living the Xingu National Indigenous Park in Matugrosa State, Brazil. They speak the Camarilá language, which belongs to the Tupi Guarani family. This is a large family of languages spoken by many indigenous groups in Brazil. The Camarilá total population is 120 people. We are working in a community living in Ipaú Village. In these villages, the population is about 230 people. Camarilá like to share and show their culture, they like to talk and sing about people's truth. As they say, our culture is strong and our culture also living in the Xingu Indigenous Park. The T-language also belongs to the Tupi Guarani family. The total population is about 360 people. They live in three different villages, two place in a village called Saidao Masa, with a population of 72. Two are strong and fighting. Everybody speaks the Amiti language, but many of them speak all the languages too. This is Camarilá, Guarani and Tupi. The population is Guarani with many young adults and children. To live my past behind me in English, the past is always behind me. And the future is located in front of me. Niquin, Camarilá and Aweji cultures, these can be different. For example, in the Niquin culture, the past is inside the heart, very deep inside the heart. And the future is inside the mind. Yes, the future is located inside the mind, not in front of me or behind me. The past is inside my eyes, things that have side the eyes. For the Camarilá and Aweji people, the future is located in front of the eyes. I may be thinking of these things didn't happen, but I can see it. So here we can see how different cultures have different ways of situating events in time. Can be aligned from the future to the past, or from the past to the future. It can be in your vision, in your imagination. Each way has its unique value in representing the diversity of habits, think about and talk about time. To compare event-based time intervals in Camarilá, Aweji and with our own notions, cognitive means and tools are one type. So cognitive artifacts are tools for thinking. In our culture we have numbers, calendars and clocks, which give us concepts like weeks, months and years. However, in Camarilá and Aweji there are no cognitive artifacts like calendars and clocks. So what kind of concepts do they use to think about time? They think about time at the end of events. So what is an event? Is something that happens or takes place? A child is born, an election takes place, an atom moves. With this in mind, let's see how events form the basis of concepts of time in Camarilá, Aweji and with. Their time is based on events and we call this way of organizing time, event-based time intervals. The main feature of event-based time intervals is the intervals is the event itself. In our culture we often use event-based intervals. For example, we might say, I will meet you at lunchtime. Event-based time intervals are the way in which time is thought about in indigenous cultures in Brazil and other parts of the world where people do not use clocks and calendars. So to understand the event-based time intervals in these languages and cultures we will show you how the life stages, the sunlight, the position of the sun, the water level, the stars, constellations, moon activities and anode on the stream are the foundations for concepts of time, Aweji. It is fact that in these cultures they don't have birthdays. What they have are life stages, child, adolescent, adult and old person. And for them life is a process of learning and acquiring skills and the stages of life are categories of social lives. These stages of life are based on skills and responsibility. Each member of the community will pass through this process and at each stage they will be recognized and respected for their social role in the community. So the position of the sun, the light, the daylight and activities are important facts for the use of event-based intervals. Very early it is getting out, it brings me down. You're a thin, calm animal, you don't have to know. It's a home, the sun is gone, it disappeared, sunset. The sun is on top of the house, evening, sunset. The location, it is very dark, midnight. Traditionally, Kamayura use not so much strength to measure the duration of a fishing expedition. This was the traditional way to measure time. So when we were camping for the night, we hadn't tied the first knot. On that first day, we don't fish, we just plan the fishing. The next day, the next knot is untied and we begin fishing as planned. That's how it goes, untying a knot every day throughout the fishing trip. In Kamayura and Awaiti, the stars also index time intervals. The activities of planting and harvesting cultivated crops and wild fruits, traditional festivals and fishing are linked to the appearance of nine constellations. These constellations also indicate the period of rain, heavy rain, cold weather, windy period, breeze, drought, sun heat, therefore indicating rain season and dry season. The moon's phases or shapes are indices of the beginning and end of the female menstrual cycle. They are event phase time intervals. We always look out for the moon. When we look at the moon, we already know that we are going to menstruate. Women are always afraid of menstruation. Every woman has her own menstruates on a different day. When the woman does not menstruate at her moon, the woman becomes anxious. She knows that she is pregnant. I always menstruate at my moon, this one. So, I don't know how it works. I just leave that like that. For questions and answers, I want to say thank you for to see it. I really appreciate your comments. First of all, I want to say that we have a crew here. Without the help of the team you see at the end, it was not possible. It's not only my work, it's our work together. Without the team from the field, Wadi, Joaquin and Pautu, this was not possible to have here. Without my supervisors, all the three are here. Luna and Alberto and Christine. The musicians, they compose the music you see at the beginning and at the end. They compose exclusively just for that. In terms of technical, there is a lot of teamwork here. Without them, we couldn't make that as it is now. And also Alfredo, he's not here. He's teaching today, but he's the technician also with me. We went all through how to edit and put together all these ideas. Because you can imagine I had ten hours of footage, plus films and photos and ideas. And we have to put together in a way I can talk to you and you understand what I'm saying. So hopefully we succeed to do that. That's it. You can ask questions for me and for the supervisor team. Questions for Wadi, Joaquin and Pautu. Wadi is in Brasilia and he's there. I can send him a message and he can answer. Yeah, we can talk with him and us if we need it. To be honest, it's mainly largely her work here. She went to all this, we don't have this, I think you showed it earlier to some of these audiences. What kind of means of transport and what she's been through. Getting ill during field work due to black magic and things like that. She survived for this research project. She really had a unique experience herself and collected this massive amount of invaluable data that we otherwise wouldn't know about. The important thing is the way the field work worked out is that Vera lived with these people. They're really not, some of them are reluctant to share or reluctant to other people. Some of them have been better bruised with researchers going into communities and coming up with things for themselves which did not reflect. They were misinterpreted and even Vera's previous work was misinterpreted by journalists who are after sensation. These people know no time. Titles like that which is absolutely funny to all of us here but it's actually quite not nice for people who welcome into their homes and feed you and sleep next to you for days and days. So it's to great credit to Vera to actually succeed in bringing things together, showing things that are similar and different among these cultures. They've shared quite a lot culturally. Some bits are shared linguistically, some are not. But we know about it in her upcoming papers and the thesis is hopefully promised for March. We'll give everyone posted who's interested in the outcome of this really precious and special research. That's for me and Alberto I don't know if you want to say. Yes thank Vera because she's very modest. She's too modest. She's made her work and it has been amazing to work with her. If you're arriving on the plane or the bus or something and someone from the village is going to pick you up. Do you say I'm arriving around sunset? You know what I mean? I know that in the past they talked about it. I'm not quite sure. Basically how did it match up with the Brazilian-European time framework? The two systems coexist. Now I know the culture. I could say I run about the time in terms of cultural events. And as well link that with our time, measured time. Because the difference between one time and another because our system is very precise. It's very measured. Their events is not as precise as we are. Because their event is not the base on the measurement like number, metric, matrix. They are based on the event what they do and that part of the time. The two systems can do together. I can try to do the culture way and ask them to pick me up and hook a hook a time. And they will understand because they know I know. And if it's not precise how do you manage that? Because life, the metric part of our life makes sense in our kind of life we do. When you are in the village these precise numerical moments is not necessary, is it? Except a few of your people in your pictures were wearing watches. Yeah, they do. They wear watches. They have calendars but doesn't mean they... Culturally they use that. They can use the two together. Now at moment is a very popular we call hybrid calendars, right? They get the idea of event base and match together for our months and the year. And they put all together in a beautiful art format and they say that's the only queen calendar, right? So it's beautiful but you can see when you look properly how it's done and you can see very clearly the two systems that coexist together. They know and they are able to understand our way to think about time. They do that. And the village they have that. Talking about measurement and numbers and artefacts, could you say something more about the use of strings or knots in strings to reckon time when they go on fishing expeditions? Yeah. Okay, for example, you could think traditionally when you go to a fishing pond, right? And then how you measure that, how you tell your people and the village when you come back or how long this would take and how is planned. So in our tea they use the knots on the strings. So the person who goes to plan everything they do a knot. And the string. So they are not counting the knots. Each knot represent what most of the day they go to stay. But also the present activity as well. In bed everything and one knot, right? That's why when he say the first day we don't count this and this knot is not important. It's only a mean we arrive. Yeah? But there's no activity linked to the knots symbolically. So on the next day the next knot is untied and then we have done the activity we plan to do. So as understood that knot every night, every day when they finish the activity and go through overnight they untie the knot. That not mean the activity of the day is finished and the next day comes another activity. But then you think oh but they will count days in there. I said yeah but when they count days as a day like task day for the next day. How many days they will count with the number which is the fingers. One finger, two fingers and then one, two and then a hand, right? And then you can see when there's a big number they can go to the fingers the hands and the feet and then when they fit my feet and hand finish they can go off the neighbor. So but the numerical moment of measure these days is by this number. But the activity of the day and the passage of one day overnight to another night is measure of the knot. So and then you can argue oh but this is a cognitive artifact. I think so it is a cognitive artifact not a calendaric or nometrical one in that way because it's not precisely. But there's a mechanism of to measure time. It's very interesting to point out when we mentioned the superior wall of hypothesis in the beginning. So we kind of think about the way to discover what we think about when we think about where we talk about time. So if we say time flies we really think about time that's got wings and flies. Or there's quite a few metaphors that we use to refer to time. So we somehow think of time as a moving thing. Maybe not really flying but there's something is moving and also we can move. We're approaching a bright future or we are moving away from our past. So there's got to be time and motion really relating but this is something that's really interesting. There's nothing like that in those cultures. They don't talk and they don't think about time as something that moves or that you move in it. Or that you are somehow contained in time as we are as we think. So language and culture are really quite closely related. It's a very intimate relationship and we can say that thinking is really flexible. But what is very different and this is something that's quite related to superior wall of hypothesis is that habitual thinking differs. And we can see through language how it does. So they habitually don't have to think about precise time at all. They don't need it and that's what they think about it. But they can if they need to so I think that's the... The interesting thing about this is that it actually argues against the Wolf-Sapir hypothesis. The way in which Wolf-Sapir hypothesis is usually understood and taught and taught indeed. Because these people are not kind of trapped in one particular cultural conceptual system. They are able to adopt another one. But the language is actually a reflection of cultural practices rather than being a determinant of a direct determinant of thinking. I mean it kind of entrenched certain ways of thinking but it doesn't determine it. So you want to talk about habitual thinking. I think that in this relationship, in our relationship with time and do things we precisely overthink about the duration of the event we go to do. So therefore the times come first, right? They kind of measure very big. And this culture is not how long that takes but how you do it, right? So I feel like the time is... Time is this but... And that event is more important what I'm doing, who I'm doing and why I'm doing than measure that in a metric way. It's not what is important. I go to fish. Every night I go to one type of knot. That means I did what I have to do. And then close to my last knot I go to give a sign to the village. I'm back. If for a reason all this knot finish and my family... For another hand in the village. If everybody went to fish and they take so long time the knot is already gone and nobody come back and something going on, right? So all these things, so it's more important why I go to fish and get a lot of fish and bring home than how long I will take to get one fish from the river, right? Or things like that because we do that all the time. So that's why it's very prominent and our language as well in terms of showing that. And I think in this house today they give value more of the relationship what they are doing with their ambient event to think this abstraction measurement of how long that event will take. But in some way they do divide these events. That's why they have the part of the day and otherwise they wouldn't do it, right? Something changes. Yeah. So I finish the perspective of change is very important there because the environment change and how you measure that, right? How you mark that it's not a measurement but how you identify that and then they create that to mark that change but not the duration of that change. Something like that. I don't know. I'm off for discussion. If you can tell something about the stimuli. I think it's very interesting for some of you who are maybe embarking on future research careers or thinking about it at least at this point or some projects that you may do yourself. So the stimuli we use for elicitation and especially those that didn't work. I think it's useful to know about those because we came with our prejudice about oh, let's see, is time a line or a circle? So let's give different stimuli and see how, you know, could be one of those. And it's neither, kind of. We have all these stimuli, beautiful pictures ready and just ready to elicit things. And then there I called from the middle of the field work and said, it's not working. So I think that's an interesting thing to think about how you actually elicit data of influencing people in your perspective that you cannot really shake off easily. So maybe you can tell us about the stimuli that you put in. Because, yeah, it's what the question of your research was, how do people set plus time, right? So the basic line for design anything to verify that is our way to think about time. So we clever sit together and say, well, let's go to put some pictures together. They combine and are always an event. So one action and this is an outhouse, right? One action lets one know that you can do one before and after and all these ideas in there, right? It's perfect for us. I went to the field work and the people looked at this and then start talking about it. And then I didn't take too long to understand they are not talking about the event. They are describing the photo. The photo didn't bring anything, right? So they just go over it. There's a man talking, oh, there's a man job. Yeah, we do have that. That's the color and things like that. And I said, well, but it's not that. And then he said, you know, I know you want to know about our time. Let's go to put that at the end. I tell you, let's go to talk. So that's what they did. And the whole field work changed completely. And I said, sorry, but this stimuli is not working that way. But for another hand was working because with that I provoke the stupid of my way to think. And they said, listen, if you really want to understand the way we think, let's go to sit here and let's go to talk about. And then several ways, several narratives. And give me an example and go around and about. Did you see that? You see, listen, this one is indicate that. And then after a while, you understand what they are talking about. So that was the experience of the stimuli. So that's when they stimuli. You plan some stimuli or some experiment. So let's say you take language and then everything is go negative, right? But then you have to look for the positive way. And I look for the positive way. It really was fantastic to stimuli. People talk about the real things, not what is in there. We had stages of life, like baby, child, grown up, old, death. So we thought, are they going to put it a month after that, which one comes first? Does it come in a circle? You know, just no more reasoning what can be. And none of this works because they do not situate it in anything. These things are not contained. Because the pregnancy of a lady is not like we do, right? We conceive, and then we already give a name for the child already in the conceiving time. So the notion of what life is, the notion of a human being is different as well, right? And then you give all these nine month things together were so funny. And then they look and say, oh wow, yeah, don't do that. And then they start telling me how the pregnancy and how the conception and how it's done. And the way they see that and why they see that. And it's completely different what we think in terms of a pregnancy and having a baby. So it's a completely different concept, which led to the concept of time too. Yeah. If I can be devil's advocate, I think what you're comparing is pre-industrial situations with post-industrial and literate situations. If you think about, this is separate from language, right? So if you go back to earlier phases of people who spoke English in farming, you know, agricultural period. The calendar so-called was an event-based one. Harvest time, you know, planting time. You have festivals at times like harvest time, not because it's the 5th of January or the 23rd of November. It's because that's when you actually harvest the plants. And the introduction of temporality was as much connected with the church and, you know, knowing when to go through prayers and so on. They're people's daily rhythms of life. So the comparison I'm suggesting is not between English and Awechi, but actually pre-industrial and post-industrial. Yeah. You can have that, but you have to think when, why I came to this idea. Because this idea nowadays and cognition, for example, they have claimed the way we think about time is universal. We always think about time in terms of America and metaphorical from space, from time to space. And all these make a model and everybody say, oh, everybody is, as a human being, we do the same mapping, right? And I say, no, I'm not saying that because we don't. We can't find, I'm not going to the level of compare an industrial, not industrial thing, right? That's not my interest. My interest is to see how these people do in terms of mapping to conceptualize time, in relation to what the way we conceptualize time, because people claim this way we do is universal. Everybody does. And I say, no, it's not. Precisely my point is it's not universal, even for speakers of English, in the sense that it's... Yeah, but they seem to be very strong concept and... It's more like for space time mapping that comes through language. This relates to language as it is English, not just English, any other Indo-European language, has this kind of way of referring to time that became habitual. So Christmas is coming, for example. That is a very common phrase in many languages. Or, you know, difficult times are behind us or he left his past behind. It's the way you talk about time that generates habitual ways of thinking about it or referring to it. So in that sense, the point that Peter has about the industrial, of course, these are societies of the cultural... Yeah, when the clock came in England, the train here was a massive change in terms of behavior and way English community organized themselves. Well, I would say that it's... I think Peter is right in the sense that these metaphors are not necessarily attached to particular linguistic families. So if we look at... We find exactly the same space time mapping in Chinese, for example, as you know. And it's quite ancient as well. But again, Chinese society was a large-scale agricultural society, highly hierarchical. So in fact, I think it's pre-industrial. It goes back to states, basically, when you have states. So even in South America, you know, neighboring cultures, the Incas had the Kipu, which was a kind of a string, you know. But that used counting. And presumably this... And it was used for enumerating production, agricultural production, and sizes of fields and stuff like that. These people don't have it. And I don't think it's because... just because of the language. Because actually, this is something also important, that the three languages that you investigated, two are closely related, but one is completely unrelated. And yet they use exactly the same... actually exactly the same system. Yeah, it's exactly the same system. One is in the Shingu, and then you go up to reduce a huge distance, right? And a complete cultural unrelated, and they do exactly the same. And I investigate in other communities as well, already in Hondonia, which originate in my research. And also that's the same. So it's... but yeah, the pre-industrial and agriculture, and they also play... And this is a culture, is it? Language captures those things that are relevant for the culture, the time, and where the culture is at the moment of time. Language captures that, but by learning the language in the community, you transmit those beliefs, cultural practices, and you kind of continue this kind of way of phrasing things. This is why the habitual thinking is, I think, a central concept, that language perpetuates. You know how you said about the moon phases? And every woman has her own moon. And they're waiting, they wait, they worry if that moon passes without menstruation. So how do they talk in language about what wouldn't happen? Because even thinking about how to phrase a question, I have to say, if the moon passes, what would I do? I have to use tense. So like, how do they talk about that? Okay, that's another thing for this language. These languages are not tense, smart, right? These languages have modality and aspects, language. So they have marks, which indicate when and how things are done, right? So, and also, particularly now at TI in Cameroon, they have... For example, if they tell me a story, they have to tell on this, and come on the idea of evidentiality of the language. So they have marks, just tell me whose real story, it's a fake tissue story, it's a go-to-have, but not go-to-have. So they have several marks on the language, which is completely different from English or any western country language. So it's another level of discussion in terms of grammaticalization of time and language. Yeah, in this case, this language is a model aspect of language. And evidentiality language is a very complicated grammatical thing. So many people try to understand, but I didn't read them anything. They say, oh, that's a good one, but I struggle to understand it. But is that the case? Yeah. So they don't talk about it as... They would say, I would say, for example, if I'm already... I would say, oh well, my moon is gone, is it? Nothing come up, I'm really prepared myself, father, I'm pregnant. If I'm unmarried, that's okay, if I'm not married, this would be a trouble. So that's the idea of worry about it. Yeah, and there is a way to say things like that, yeah, absolutely. It's not necessary market time there. Yeah, yeah. On the same pass, you mean? Yeah. It's more, it would be more the worry who they speak talking about than the time that that's... Yeah, there's no... They wouldn't do market time for that now. They would make more how they are worried about it. Yeah, so, yeah. Any comments, questions? Much earlier, when you were first eliciting, trying to elicit the time information, you thought they'll probably line up events linearly or cyclically. Yeah. These ideas, neither one of those are obviously the case. Do you have an argument or ideas to how it's mapped? Because it's obviously not mapped. Yeah, it's quite complicated, right? Because to see... One way to see direction of time is to see how people refer to past and present and future, right? And then you see the linearity in there and behind and the front and things. So you can see already the kind of drawing. And we... And now conceptualization of cyclically, we think things will have repeated several times, they must be cyclical. Cyclical, yeah? Cyclical, yeah. But it's not the case for this culture, right? So if everything I remember is stored in my eyes, so the big metaphor here is seeing things. Seeing things means remembering things, right? So is that the direction for that? No, they are just sent on a place, right? For example, they make the time intervals of day and night and things all linked with the nature. And all the cosmology also linked with the moon and the sun. The sun is a powerful thing, right? And then you look at the narrative of the sun and how this combines with the existence of being their self and combines the existence of their identity of their self. You don't really see the direction of time is a cycle and then repeating things doesn't mean cyclical because every moment is something different. So although it's... You know what I mean? So the concept says, man, it can't be the same tomorrow. There'll be something different, right? So it's almost experiential, right? Yeah, yeah, I would say so. But we have to be careful about this kind of being the idea of now and things like that because it's not like that because they have memories, they have cosmology, right? So they also live off the history they constitute themselves. So we can't argument that. But for sure I can say it's not a cycle. I can say it's not one line. But I don't know which one is, right? But I can say what are not. Yeah, but I didn't reach the idea. I couldn't draw, really. So fast I couldn't find any indication I could do that. It may not be a coincidence that one second is more or less the sun as an average human heart beat. Right. But is really the most obvious or the most salient, periodic English anyone can count is their own heart beat. The most cyclic, and it has to be cyclic because it's not cyclic, it probably did for some time. Oh, wow. But did they have any concept of heart beats? No, I didn't look at that. No, no, no, they probably had. But then again, my experience of body and concept of bodies give me some argument what is bored for me, not necessarily bored for our culture, right? So that they see the way the body is in relation to the universe they live is different concept. And one good example is what is disease. Right? So what should be one well in the couch way what should be diseased with our sickness, right? So then you can see there's two ways to see person as a whole and the body and part of the body. So I would say, I don't think we need to investigate that but I would say it would be quite a different concept. Okay, well, let's thank Vera for her talk.