From: joe@spdcc.com (Joseph Francis)
Newsgroups: soc.bi,soc.motss
Subject: Re: Liberty (was something relevant about CO-2 long ago...)
Date: 21 Dec 92 18:52:52 GMT
Article-I.D.: spdcc.1992Dec21.185252.6796
Organization: S.P. Dyer Computer Consulting, Cambridge MA

In article <1992Dec21.163827.15747@cbnewsm.cb.att.com> mls@cbnewsm.cb.att.com (mike.siemon) writes:
>In article <BzL08y.G9D@demon.co.uk> gtoal@pizzabox.demon.co.uk (Graham Toal)
>writes:
>
>>that language influences behaviour has been totally discredited.  I think
>>its called the Whorf Hyothesis or something like that.  Most of the
>>linguists I know argue forcibly that language adapts to the needs and
>>environment of its users, not vice-versa.
>
>There are several "levels" to the hypothesis.  The "strong" version 
>is that language "determines" thought.  The implications are that if
>your language does not provide a (direct) means of expressing some-
>thing, you *won't* think it.  This version fails, pretty resoundingly
>(e.g., in color terms, one of the classic tests, languages may have
>few or many words or phrase-making capabilities for color description
>-- but the existence or non-existence of these does not make any real
>difference with regard to perceptual/operational distinctions of color.)

Does it? I know I'm treading out of my side of the pod, but this must
relate of course to some languages of African savannah tribes where
there are only two words for color - one equivalent to xanthic colors
(yellows, 'warm' colors,) and cyanotic colors (blues, 'cool' colors).
These relate, fairly accurately, to the primary colors in the
landscape - savannah/sky. Do people who use this language 'see' the
same specturm as those who had a more spectrally distributed
environment? Granted that these people may not have developed neural
pathways leading to the perception of burnt-sienna red as a hue
distinct from goldenrod yellow (one perhaps is merely lighter or
darker version of 'warm' color), if they have, do they 'think' of the
colors as different? Do they assign them differently and create
thought differently about them? Isn't that part of the trick? If they
can't communicate their thought, then /are they thinking it/? Can they
demonstrate the thought? There seems to be a disjunction here.

Then we can speak of Aleutians and snow, another thing entirely. Bruce
Chatwin's book on travelling in Chile also made some interesting
points on language.

>The failing of the "strong" Whorf hypothesis is that it fails to allow
>for *all* languages being open, periphrastically, to say *anything*
>that is sayable in any other language (maybe less "elegantly" and with
>the omission of whatever it is that "artful" language conveys.)
>
>A weaker form of the hypothesis is that our language may predispose us
>differentially to certain forms of thought.  This may or may not be so
>-- as soon as you avoid linguistic determinism, it becomes *very* hard
>to construct any controllable test for this, or even to know what it
>might mean.  The "weak" Whorf hypothesis is really no more than a tauto-
>logy: our languages express our culture, which also shows in the common
>themes and materials of our "thoughts."  We learn our languages, and
>our "predispositions" for thinking at the same time; they are, in some
>sense, the "same" thing.

Then; why, when I speak French, do I 'think' in French. In a broad
sense, I cannot think transitively as I do in English. I can hold a
mixed-language conversation (hear English, speak French or
vice-versa), but it really does take me a moment to shift /between/
languages. Somedays I can't think in French at and I have a terrible
time. I really feel that the language, independent of expressing that
language, has a very strong influence on modes of thinking, from
personal experience, and in particular, primitive language elements
(prepositions). My sense of time and space is different in French than
in English.


-- 
US Jojo; damp, slighly soiled, but tasty nonetheless.
Newsgroups: soc.bi