INTRO DUCTION The : elation of language to world view is an issuc over which nuecrous heated a guments have been run for over the last two centuries. Akkough Humbolet's philosophy of language, which later influenced linguistics, is often equated with the concept of world view, "the idea that a system of language shaped the thinking of its speakers was first formulated by Herder" (Schaff 1973, 8 cited in Al- Sheikh 1985, 8). It was Boas, the anthropologist and then linguist, who brought the seeds of Humboldtian structuralism, however, to America and passed them over to Sapir with whom whorf worked during his last years. Boas beliceved that languages of the world are to a large extent structurally the same irrespective of respective cultures or ethnic groups (see, eg Wardaugh 1986 [1987), 207). Conversely, Sapir believed that languages are structurally different, ic there are no limits to the differences among languages of the world. Therefore, their respective speakers see the world differently ; hence relativity A more extreme view is held by whorf who, like Herder, believed that the language we use wholly determines (or shapes) the categories in which we think as if language and thought were equivalent (cf. Mazor 1989 and Chatterjee 1985) ; hence determinism', a term with which the name of F. de Saussure as a neo- Humboldtian is also associated in current debates (see Mazor 1989 for a critical