Language and Thought

Introduction

Franz Boas on Linguistic Determinism

• ... it determines those aspects of experience that must be expressed...When we say "The man killed the bull" we understand that a definite single man in the past killed a definite single bull. We cannot express this experience in which a way that we remain in doubt whether adefinite or indefinite person or bull, one or more persons or bulls, the present or past time are meant. We have to choose between aspects and one or the other must be chosen. The obligatory aspects areexpressed by means of grammatical devices (1938:132). The aspects chosen in different groups of languages vary fundamentally. To give an example; while for us, definiteness, number and time are obligatory aspects, we find in another location -- near the speaker or somewhere else, source of information, whether seen, heard (i.e., known byhearsay) or inferred -- as obligatory aspects. Instead of saying "The man killed the bull." I should have to say, "This man (or men) kill (indefinite tense) as seen by me that bull (or bulls)" (Boas 1938:133). "a paucity of obligatory aspects does not by any means imply obscurity of speech. When necessary, clarity can be obtained by adding explanatory words.

Edward Sapir (1884 —1939 )

German and Indo-European philology to descriptive Native American linguistics to psychological anthropology

Edward Sapir on Linguistic Determinism

• Language is a guide to "social reality." Though language is notordinarily thought of as of essential interest to the students of social science, it powerfully conditions all our thinking about social problems and processes. Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the "real world" is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached. Sapir, Language 1929)

Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897 —1941 )

Chemical engineer (MIT), fire insurance inspector, amateur linguist

Religion to texts and language to Mayan, anthropology, Hopi via Sapir

WHORF on English versus Hopi

• We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to beorganized by our minds -- and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way -- an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the pattern of our language. The agreement is, of course, an implicit and unstated one, BUT ITS TERMS ARE ABSOLUTELY OBLIGATORY: we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees.

• "Science and Linguistics (c.a. 1940).

Differences

• Boas: “… it determines those aspects of experience that must be expressed…”

• Sapir: Language is a guide to "social reality." • Whorf: We dissect nature along lines laid down

by our native languages. • Sometimes called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

Languages in cultures

Language as form:Linguistic elements can be studied as contrasting and complementary forms. Examination of their arrangement, rules for combination, generating surface structure. (Bloomfield, Chomsky)

Language as action:People say things and mean something. They do things with words. Language is more than communication, it is also understanding the world, creating the world. (Sapir, Whorf, Hymes)

Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835)

Language as Weltanschaung (worldview)

“Each tongue draws a circle about the people to whom it belongs, and it is possible to leave this circle only by simultaneously entering that of another people.”

but “one always caries over into a foreign tongue to a greater or lesser degree one’s own cosmic viewpoint — indeed one’s personal linguistic pattern.”

Linguistic Relativity

“The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds—and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds.” (213)

– B. L. Whorf

Whorf’s Questions• Are our concepts of time, space and matter given in

substantially the same form by experience to all men, or are they in part conditioned by the structure of particular languages?

• Ans: This is the Whorfian Hypothesis• Are there traceable affinities between cultural and

behavioral norms and large scale linguistic patterns?• Ans: “I [Whorf] would be the last to pretend that there is

anything so definite as a correlation between culture and language and especially between ethnological rubrics such as agricultural, hunting etc, and linguistic ones like inflected, synthetic and isolating.

Eskimo words for snowBoas Introduction to HAIL (1911: 21-22) :aput - snow on the groundqana - falling snowpiqsirpoq - drifting snowqimuqsuq - snowdrift

Whorf :English one word (snow) | Eskimo - many words

“We have the same word for falling snow, snow on the ground, snow packed hard like ice, slushy snow, wind-driven flying snow … To an Eskimo, this all-inclusive word would be almost unthinkable … he uses different words for them and for other kinds of snow.”

So what?

Color Perception• Color spectrum is continuous…

still we divide it into categories.

• Why do we divide the spectrum into these categories?

Arbitrary division

• On the Whorfian view, color categories are seen to be arbitrary

– “… an American describing [the spectrum] will list hues as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple … nothing inherent either in the spectrum or the human perception … which would compel its division in this way.”

(Gleason, 1961)

Brown and Lenneberg (1958) “Color-Codability”

• Different languages classify colors differently.

• Question, does this affect peoples perception of color?

• Codability: regardless of language, speakers took longer to classify borderline colors than usual colors.

• Also when speakers were asked to recall the color, they tended to classify borderline colors closer to the prototypic color.

Universalism

• Berlin and Kay (1969) used naming experiments to extract colour categories

• Subjects marked the focus and extent of colour terms in a colour chart.

Human Universals• Berlin & Kay (1969): languages name

colors in a universal, evolutionary order:

• The best example of a Greek person’s word for “blue” will be very similar to a Canadian’s and to a Chinese person’s

Black

WhiteRed

Green

YellowBlue Brown

Pink

Purple

Orange

Grey

Primary colors Derived colors

Universalism

• Berlin and Kay noticed a universal patternin color naming of different languages.

Vocabulary and Classification

Basic/primary colour terms: blue, green, yellow, orange, red, white, black

Daribi:huzhuku - darkmama’ - light

Russian:goluboy - sky bluesiniy - blue, dark blue

Derivative colour terms: violet, aqua, turquoise

Colour termsTwo colour terms: white and black (light and dark)Three: red, white, blackFour: yellow or green, red, white, blackFive: yellow, green, red, white, blackSix: blue, yellow, green, red, white, blackSeven: brown, blue, yellow, green, red, white, blackEight +: purple/pink/orange/grey + above

Red is red in nearly any language:

Linguistic Relativity

• In general, evidence does not support the claim that the manner in which contentwords divide the world strongly influences thought.

• But consider Chomsky’s near the box vs. in the box argument – what’s at stake here?

• “Near/in the river” or “Near/on the beach”

A Strange Conversation?

W: Did you take out the trash yet?M: Yeah, sure, I took some of it out.W: Well, finish the job!M: I already did.

Scalar Implicature

• “Some” “not all”• Similarly, “near” “not in”• Does scalar implicature work differently for

different languages?• How do function words divide space &

time in different languages?