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Odd linguistics argument

Roboramma

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Hi all. I'm involved in a little debate about atheism on a yoga board. I'm putting this in the science forum because I'm asking mainly about the scientific claims, and whether they are acurate.

Anyway, someone brought up some points about linguistics to suggest that words and definitions change the world, or something like that. I'm wondering if anyone can tell me anything about the linguistics he's talking about, and how acurate what he's saying is.

I don't really know all that much about this, aside from what I've read from Steven Pinker, but as my knowledge is limited, I was hoping someone else could help me broaden it.

The full post his here: http://p196.ezboard.com/fyoga84291frm6.showMessageRange?topicID=167.topic&start=61&stop=72

In linguistics, one of the ideas advanced by the Sapir-Whoft hypothesis---which can list towards linguistic determinism---is that most Western languages in general tend to analyze reality as objects in space: the present and future are thought of as a "places," and time is a path linking them.

A phrase like "three days" is grammatically equivalent to "three apples" or "three miles."

This is in comparison with other languages---Whorf's famous example was of the Hopi Native American language, which is oriented towards process.

So how is a Hopi's reality shaped by language?

Whorf advanced the idea that a Hopi speaker would find relativistic physics easier to understand than an Western language speaker.

Um, empirically?

"Hunter-gatherers from the Pirahã tribe, whose language only contains words for the numbers one and two, were unable to reliably tell the difference between four objects placed in a row and five in the same configuration.

Peter Gordon, the psychologist at Columbia University in New York City who carried out the experiment, does not claim that his finding holds for all kinds of thought.

'There are certainly things that we can think about that we cannot talk about. But for numbers I have shown that a limitation in language affects cognition.'"

From New Scientist, 19 August 2004
Click to expand...

I'm actually not entirely sure what he's saying. Obviously words affect thought, but I don't think they do so to a very high extent. If there's a concept we don't have a word for, but it would be useful to have a word for it, we're not incapable of thinking about it. We just come up with a new word.
 
The science as quoted says people who think differently, talk differently or vice versa. Big deal. What the science doesn't say is people who think/talk differently have a different physical experience of the universe, which seems to be what he's trying to claim.

If you don't have a word for donkey, it doesn't mean you can't ride one.
 
Shrinker said:
The science as quoted says people who think differently, talk differently or vice versa. Big deal. What the science doesn't say is people who think/talk differently have a different physical experience of the universe, which seems to be what he's trying to claim.

If you don't have a word for donkey, it doesn't mean you can't ride one.
Click to expand...

There's some useful stuff about this at Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_Hypothesis

I thought the language makes reality horse had expired years ago. But there are those who want to flog the poor beast back to life...
 
In linguistics, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (SWH) states that there is a systematic relationship between the grammatical categories of the language a person speaks and how that person both understands the world and behaves in it.
Click to expand...
Sounds entirely reasonable to me. I would expect such a relationship. Cause and effect, now that's another matter.

~~ Paul
 
Somehow I find it hard to believe that people wouldn't be able to distinguish between 4 and 5 apples.
 
I will have to check around for it, but it seems to me I recently read where the "1,2, more than 2" cultures could indeed tell the difference between larger numbers. They used qualifiers--sort of a "much more than two", "a little more than two", "way way more than two".

Same hypothesis makes a big deal of the many words for "snow" that the eskimos have. We just have "snow"...which we modify, using "powdery", "fluffy", "sticky", "dense", "driving", etc.
 
Merc said:
Same hypothesis makes a big deal of the many words for "snow" that the eskimos have. We just have "snow"...which we modify, using "powdery", "fluffy", "sticky", "dense", "driving", etc.
Click to expand...
I think they have about 20 words for ice and snow. It's a polysynthetic language, so you can just make them up as you go along.

Meanwhile: snow, ice, iceberg, snowflake, ice crystal, ice fog, hoarfrost, frazil, sleet, hail, graupel, powder, packed powder, wet powder, corn snow, frozen granular, wet granular, loose granular, hardpack, snow drift, snow flurry, snow shower, snow crust, sun crust, rain crust, wind slab, ice crust, film crust, dendrite, blizzard, firn, rime.

~~ Paul
 
Snow and snow-related phenomena are important and generate a lot of words in areas with a lot of snow. It may create more words than seems intuitively necessary for people living closer to the equator, but it's really not that surprising when you think of it.

A preliminary list of about 400 snow-related Norwegian words:
http://folk.ntnu.no/ivarse/snjoord.html
(With English explanations.)

I'm sure you can make similar long lists for any language used in polar areas. Including English in Canada and the USA.

Ririon
 
As an aside, people can identify three objects without counting, but must “laboriously” count to identify four or more. This was detected by timing how fast people can determine #’s of objects in a lab. 1, 2 and 3 were almost instantaneous. 4 and more took several extra milliseconds.

This shows up in language. Ordinal #’s don’t regularize until 4: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth...

This is in Stanislas Dehaene’s The Number Sense, which goes into more language/number relationships.
 
Language might not mold your perception of reality, but math does. If you don't have a particularly well-defined concept of the number four, you're not going to be able to count things as well as other people. And as the above poster points out, around four or five is where people lose their ability to "instinctively" count the number of things.

Of course, I might be biased because I really like math. But still, math is different from language, and appears to be slightly less innate than language is. If you haven't learned the skill, you haven't learned the skill.
 
I thought T.H. Huxley invented the term "agnostic", not Bertrand Russell.

The Whorf claim I read was that pre- white man, the Hopi had no word for "time". I understand this has been shown to be a misunderstanding.
(What they did not have were mechanical clocks. Neither did white men until quite recently).

I've never understood how anyone can seriously think that language shapes reality. It undoubtedly affects our view of reality, but that's not the same thing at all.
 
Epepke said:
Except that this is false.
Click to expand...
Indeed, the claim that they have 100 words for snow is false. I've managed to find about 20.

~~ Paul

Edited to add: Looks like a great book. I just ordered it. Thanks!
 
Ryan O'Dine said:
As an aside, people can identify three objects without counting, but must “laboriously” count to identify four or more. This was detected by timing how fast people can determine #’s of objects in a lab. 1, 2 and 3 were almost instantaneous. 4 and more took several extra milliseconds.

This shows up in at least the English language. Ordinal #’s don’t regularize until 4: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth...

This is in Stanislas Dehaene’s The Number Sense, which goes into more language/number relationships.
Click to expand...

I have corrected your post, as your rule is not universally applicable.
 
I don't know the details of the Piraha tribe or the experiment that determined they have trouble differentiating between four apples and five, but what sounds more plausbile to me is that the researchers simply had trouble communicating the task to the Piraha that they were being asked to accomplish.
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
Sounds entirely reasonable to me. I would expect such a relationship. Cause and effect, now that's another matter.
Click to expand...

My understanding is that even showing a relationship -- ignoring causaility for the moment -- has been extremely difficult.

Basically, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is dead, but well-meaning idiots continue to indulge in necromancy. The best evidence we have against the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis are the experiments done by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay on basic color terms, which I will be happy to discuss at length if anyone really wants to see me in full-on lecture mode. But S-W will unfortunately go down in history as yet another beautiful theory brutally done in in a dark alley by an ugly fact.
 
drkitten said:
My understanding is that even showing a relationship -- ignoring causaility for the moment -- has been extremely difficult.

Basically, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is dead, but well-meaning idiots continue to indulge in necromancy. The best evidence we have against the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis are the experiments done by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay on basic color terms, which I will be happy to discuss at length if anyone really wants to see me in full-on lecture mode. But S-W will unfortunately go down in history as yet another beautiful theory brutally done in in a dark alley by an ugly fact.
Click to expand...

I'd love to hear about it. I hope I can keep up, of course, but I'll absorb what I can. :)

To all who've posted so far, thanks for the responses, it's more than I expected. I think I'll have to really go over all this a little more before I can make a meaningful contribution.
 
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