X-Envelope-to: WORDS-L@UGA.BITNET
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Newsgroups: bit.listserv.words-l
Date:         Thu, 16 Apr 1992 14:28:00 EDT
 <WORDS-L%UGA.bitnet@VTVM2.CC.VT.EDU>
From:         BUHITELA%SUNYJCC.BITNET@VTVM2.CC.VT.EDU
Subject:      Re: nothing wrong

From:   NAME: Les Buhite
        FUNC: Visual and Performing Arts
        TEL: (716) 665-5220                   <BUHITE, LES AT A1 AT JCCV03>
To:     IN%"WORDS-L@UGA"@MRGATE@JCCW22


GRAHAM: I remember you doing this a couple of times, and it was obviously
<flame-bait.
^^^^^^^^^^^ I love it! Jail-bait, gator-bait, queer-bait... is there a
file of these  "-baits" somewhere

<But in personal mail with my peers in the CS world we
<quite often read each others mail with clauses four or five deep without
<stopping to reparse them.  I think this is a facet of the hacker personality
<though because people outside the discipline have commented if I've done
<anything like that, so I don't now.
Interesting. I haven't run across it.

<:This may be a limitation of our brain or it may be a limitation of language.
 <
<I think some research has been done on this, but I can't swear to it.
<Apocryphally I suggest that the mental stack for nested clauses has a
<depth of about 7.
Along the same lines, I've heard that 7 is the maximum number of random
items the brain can handle without having to count individually. Wonder if
the phenomema is related.

<:wading through Levi-Strauss.  Native Japanese speakers reportedly have
<:their language center in the opposite hemisphere of the brain than any
<:other known language.  This is true for non-Japanese who learn Japanese
<:as a first language, but not for anyone who learns Japanese as a second
<:language. (What difference in conceptualization this makes is open to
<:conjecture.)
<
<Beware of this sort of thing, especially when eminating from Japan.
<There's a lot of politics involved in Japanese brain research/psychology.
<There was a strong vogue about 15 years ago for Japanese psychologists
<to claim that differences in the Japanese brain were responsible for
<their so-called 'inability to innovate'.  Now that Japanese innovation
<on the international scene is more recognised by the west, these claims
<are rather embarrasedly forgotten.
I've lost the source of this.  The spin put on it in the article had to do with
aesthetics and the Japanese fascination with "fuzzy logic", which was hot
at the time.  Your warning is well taken.

<:This leads rather alarmingly back to that statement about kids with
<:ghetto dialects not being able to think up to speed with those who
<:have "proper" English...
<
<So you are supporting that hypothesis?  Or just insinuating support
<for it without having to argue the case yourself?
When the Whorf hypothesis first reared its head on this list I found it
offensive. (My PC-ness is bigger than your PC-ness!) And yet, the argument
comes back to how language shapes cognition. Is there culture without
language, and is culture an expression
of language or language an expression of culture, or are they parallel
developments?

Much has been made of the connection of the Protestant work-
ethic and the rise of capitalism, and the Japanese Shogun culture and the
success of capitalism, vs places where, generally speaking, capitalism
typically doesn't flourish, such as much of Africa and S. America; and
I find it debatable that capitalism will flourish in those parts of the former
USSR where there has never historically been a capitalist impulse.

Most of these arguments are admittedly post-facto.  But I've a bit of
experience doing business in Asia, and the successful businessmen have
typically been the Chinese (the "Jews of Asia" by their own reckoning),
and throughout much of Asia it's the Chinese who are at the heart of
capitalist enterprise in many if not most countries.
Incidentally, Idi Amin kicked the Chinese out
of Uganda.  Lacking their know-how and ambition, that country has had a
very tough time rebuilding its business sector.  And then there's the Sikhs
in India...

So within the framework of economics, one can point out cultures that are
more successful than others, and make a case that the success is a product
of the culture, and point out that language is at least a co-requisite
of culture.

In answer to your question: I don't know.

<Graham

 --still (clue)Les