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NY Times article on language and thinking | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
 meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5971 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 7 28 August 2010 at 6:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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There's an article the this Weekend's edition of the New York Times Magazine about language and cognition.
It discusses how the grammatical features of a certain language may shape the way its native speakers think, speak, and experience the world and the objects in it. Particularly interesting is the example of the language Guugu Yimithirr, a "geographic" language," in which spacial orientation is a fundamental feature of grammar. The article also mentions how gendered languages possibly influence, but not determine, a speaker's perception of objects, as well as languages that use evidentiality, that is, the necessity to grammatically specify exactly how a piece of information is known when speaking of it. It's a good read! NY Times: Does Your Language Shape How You Think? Edited by meramarina on 28 August 2010 at 9:39pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5385 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 2 of 7 29 August 2010 at 5:24pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Many things don't sound right about this article.
The author says that if you say "I spent yesterday evening with a neighbor" in English, you choose not to convey the gender of the neighbor. But then what is your next sentence going to be? How are you going to avoid using he or she forever? Conversely, if I were using French, I could say "la personne qui habite à côté de chez moi" and continue refering to "she" because "personne" is feminine. Then he claims that bed is feminine for Hebrew speakers, but that all depends on the word the speakers choses because many objects can be referred to by using different words which may have different genders, in other words, it's the noun the speaker is thinking of that has gender, not the object. The author also entirely dismisses how gender is determined and almost implies that native speakers chose the gender based on what they feel the gender of the object is. The question "Did the opposite genders of “bridge” in German and Spanish, for example, have an effect on the design of bridges in Spain and Germany?" is laughably naive. As for Guugu Yimithirr, we can imagine that this system works great outdoors when you know where things are, but probably wouldn't work so great if you got into a huge building where you can no longer where is where. I assume they either have another system available or else they will borrow the English words they need. And while we may marvel at their acquired sense of direction, it does present advantages. For instance North is North for everyone. How many times have we had to stop and think about where left and right are when trying to explain something from the point of view of a speaker who is facing us? The whole bit about how he is pointing North through himself "as if he were thin air and his own existence were irrelevant" is indeed pulled out of thin air. It's complete nonsense. It's simpler to point that way, that all. Language is a filter for thought. But thought remains intact and exists outside of language. Edited by Arekkusu on 29 August 2010 at 5:26pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6707 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 7 29 August 2010 at 7:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It a good read, but as Arekkusu points out the argumentation is weak. If you look at the system for indication of time (tempus) in the Romance languages and in Slavic languages liek Russian then you wonder whether the Russians don't care about the past - they only have one past tense, which even is the last rudiment of a long gone compound tense. But the Russians are as least as history conscious as your average Spaniard - they just use other techniques to indicate the flow of time.
Actually the article is a restatement of the old Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which in its extreme formulation states that you only can think the things that your language allows you to think. Few believe this to be true nowadays. In its much more palatable weak form it just says that languages lure you into thinking about certain things (or in a certain way) because there are certain obligatory elements you have to take into consideration. Gender is an obvious example. But even if verbs or even pronouns in some languages force you to make gender distinctions they don't hinder you from being aware of the contraints, and if we really want to say something 'impossible' then we will certainly find a way to do it, - for instance clumsy expressions like 'he/she' or '(s)he'. This can even lead to a weakening of the semantic impact of a construction or form, and again gender is a good example: there is no reason to think that Spanish bridges are different from German bridges, and the very existence of a difference in gender indicates that the analogy with human gender more or less has been lost. of the word (neutrum). They just continue to use a gender that is tied to a cer Personally I do think that languages show something about the way we think, though not in an automatic or opaque way. For instance there is a movement towards greater equality of the sexes both in Germany and in Denmark. But it has let to opposite results. In Denmark we have tried to eliminate gender differences in job names, so a Danish "sygeplejerske" (nurse) can be a man in spite of the female ending (which is a remnant of former gender distinction). The word "sygeplejer" does exist (also for women), but it just indicates the lack of a certain education. And if we get a female prime minister her title will be "statsminister". An attempt to remove the ending "-mand" in profession titles has largely fizzled out, - so now we even have female "formænd". In Germany they have chosen the opposite strategy: they make feminine words for everything, such as when Merkel turned up in the political landscape - it didn't take many nanoseconds for the Germans to coin the word "Kanzlerin". I have looked up what a male midvife is called, - no, not "Hebamme", but either "Geburtshelfer" or "Hebammerich" (according to my dictionary). But at least his handbag is called a "Hebammentasche", not a "Hebammerichtasche". Edited by Iversen on 29 August 2010 at 8:01pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5564 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 5 of 7 29 August 2010 at 9:04pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It seems much more likely to me that tribes who had developed exeptional navigational skills, that enabled them to cross virtually featureless deserts and oceans, would then go on to incorporate these directional skills in their speech, rather than it was the fact that they used this language that compelled them to develop brilliant directional skills. The suggestion is almost ridiculous, although of course it couldn't be ruled out, but there's nothing in the article to suggest how they might have controlled for the causality.
If I had perfect spacial and directional perception, I would use it sometimes in my speech to avoid relational confusion. But I still do think language probably influences the way we think. Edited by schoenewaelder on 29 August 2010 at 9:45pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5457 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 6 of 7 30 August 2010 at 12:31am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Interesting. In Norway we have, like in Denmark, also tried to eliminate the gender difference in job titles, but again, with different results. Hardly anybody says "sykepleierske" anymore, as it nowadays sounds ridiculously old-fashioned, sexist and politically incorrect. "Sykepleier" is used for both male and female nurses. "Formann" is replaced by "leder". The only political party that still holds on to having a "partiformann" instead of a "partileder" is the right-wing Fremskrittspartiet, even though their leader is lady. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6015 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 7 of 7 30 August 2010 at 11:41am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Yes, and the article talks about Whorf and says that his theories have gone out of fashion. They're not claiming to have a new theory, just new evidence.
There's a well-established rule in English that anthropomorphised objects are granted female gender. Ship naming ceremonies traditionally use the words "I name this boat <name here>. May God bless her and all who sail in her."
The mechanism may just be rather roundabout. Richard Feynman, a famous physicist, taught himself bloodhound tricks, identifying who owned what object by scent alone. Recently, a US university decided to try to teach people to follow scent trails laid out in grass. After a week or two, they were pretty good at it, sniffing their way round the course blindfolded. The researchers concluded that despite having a less sensitive nose than many species, we have all the prerequisites for learning the skill. It is simply that the environment that we grow up in doesn't call for scent following (and our upright form doesn't encourage it either). Similarly, many animals have an in-built compass made of magnetite. There is a tiny strand of this mineral in the human nose, much smaller than most species. So while we do not have a strong sense of cardinal direction, we do have a sense of cardinal direction. Much like scent trail following, it has been suggested that we fail to develop our usage of this sense because of lack of use in childhood. It may be that the system of cardinality in the language provides an environmental need to develop that skill. The anecdote of Balinese boy mentioned as being lost by being in an unfamiliar town may simply have been too young to have fully developed his sense, and simply relying on memory, but the article (frustratingly) doesn't give us an age, so it's hard to evaluate. The article states that to speak these languages "You need to have a compass in your mind that operates all the time, day and night, without lunch breaks or weekends off, since otherwise you would not be able to impart the most basic information or understand what people around you are saying" but this is incongruous with the evidence of the dizzy Mexican who could still point north. The most likely explanation for this feat is that of an actual sense of the outside world. When I'm dizzy I can point to a window only if I can see it -- he must be able to "see" north. Occam's razor obliges us to assume this most likely theory until and unless proven otherwise, so we can't use the example of cardinal languages as support for Sapir-Whorf. However, looking at what the article says about colour (and one of the things I have the most bother with in Gaelic is the colour system) I don't think he really is arguing in favour of Sapir-Whorf, but there is a very intriguing area where we have to evaluate the role of language as an element of perception in the childhood environment and a filter to the senses. I don't think language necessarily changes how we think, but it can change how we see. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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