Editing Hopi language (section)

== Metalinguistics ==
{{main|Hopi time controversy}}
[[Benjamin Lee Whorf]], a well-known [[linguistics|linguist]] and still one of the foremost authorities on the relationships obtaining between southwestern and Central American languages, used Hopi to exemplify his [[Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis|argument]] that one's worldview is affected by one's language and vice versa. Among Whorf's best-known claims was that Hopi had "no words, grammatical forms, construction or expressions that refer directly to what we call 'time.'"<ref>Carroll, John B. (ed.) (1956). ''Language Thought and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf''. MIT Press: Boston, Massachusetts. {{ISBN|978-0-262-73006-8}}</ref> Whorf's statement has been misunderstood by many to mean that Hopi has no concept of duration or succession of time at all, but in fact Whorf scholars like [[Penny Lee]] and [[John A Lucy]] have argued that he meant only that the Hopi have no conception of time as an object or a substance that may be divided and subdivided. Furthermore, according to John A. Lucy, many of Whorf's critics have failed to read his writings accurately, preferring instead to proffer uncharitable caricatures of his arguments.{{sfn|Lucy|1992}}