Ling 100: Week Ten1 Language and Thought Occasionally one hears that the language which one speaks determines how one thinks. Notice that if true, one

Ling 100: Week Ten 1

Language and Thought

Occasionally one hears that the language which one speaks determines how one thinks.

Notice that if true, one could generate a ranking of languages according to whether one could think 20th century thoughts in them.

One could say that some people are truly more primitive than others because the language they speak does not enable them to think the kinds of things that peoples with elaborate technologies think.


Language and Thought con’t

This position was formally stated by Benjamin Lee Whorf and Edward Sapir

Edward Sapir was a professional linguist

Benjamin Whorf was a fire inspector who liked to learn exotic languages

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, linguistic determination:

states that people’s thoughts are determined by the categories made available by their language, and its weaker version, linguist relativity, stating that differences among languuges cause differences in the thoughts of their speakers



The implication is heavy: the foundational categories of reality are not “in” the world but are imposed by one’s culture

An example of this way of thinking:

Whorf argued that Hopi might be better suited then English for discussions about physics

English inflects the verb for tense and thereby grammatically drags in time



and confuses the discussion

Hopi does not require that a sentence mentions time in any way.

The Whorf/Sapir Hypothesis has been experimentally probed and no evidence for it has ever been found.

For example, Navaho requires that nouns be grammatically classified according to the shape of their referents. But Navaho speakers are no better than anyone else at classifying objects by shape



Pinker for example states unequivocally:

That it is wrong, all wrong. The idea that thought is the dame thing as language is an example of what can be called a conventionally absurdity:

a statement that goes against all common sense but that everyone believes because they dimly recall having heard it somewhere and because it is so pregnant with implications



other examples include: the fact that we use only five percent of our brains, that lemmings commit mass suicide, that the Boy Scout Manual annually outsells all other books, and that we can be coerced into buying by subliminal messages

Think about it. We have all had the experience of uttering or writing a sentence, then stopping and realizing that it wasn’t exactly what we meant to say.

To have that feeling, there would have to be a



“ what we meant to say” that is different from what we said.

Also, sometimes it is not easy to find any words that properly convey a thought.

And if thoughts depended on words, how could a new word ever be coined? How could a child learn a word to begin with? How could translation from one language to another be possible?


The Hopi and Time

So let us look at Whorf’s statement that “Hopi does not require that a sentence mention time in any way”

Whorf wrote that the Hopi language contains “no words, grammatical forms, constructions, or expressions that refer directly to what we call ‘time’, or to past, or future, or to enduring or lasting.” He suggested, too, that the Hopi had “no general notion or intuition of TIME as a smooth flowing continuum in which everything in the universe proceeds at an equal rate, out of a future, through a present, into a past.”


The Hopi and Time con’t

Remarkable this would be indeed.

However, what do we make of the following sentence translated from Hopi?

Then indeed, the following day, quite early in the morning at the hour when people pray to the sun, around that time then he woke up the girl again.

Perhaps the Hopi are not as oblivious to time as Whorf made them out to be.


The Hopi and Time con’t

The anthropologist Ekkehart Malotki, who studied the Hopi extensively, who reported this sentence, also showed that Hopi speech contains tense, metaphors for time, units of time, ways to quantify units of time, and words like “ancient”, “quick”, “long time”, and “finished”.

No one is really sure how Whorf came up with his outlandish claims, but his limited, badly analyzed sample of Hopi speech and his long-time leanings toward mysticism must have contributed.


Eskimos and Snow

A residue of this idea which persists like a bad cold is that Eskimos (more properly Inuit and Yupik peoples) have large numbers of words for snow and that this is somehow indicative of a special affinity that these people have for snow.

There are a number of technical problems with this proposal.

1) What do we mean by word?

Are snow, snowy, snowier, and snowiest to be counted as different words?


Eskimos and Snowcon’t

These languages are richly inflected and a single root could have potentially infinite forms

2) The languages of the Inuit and Yupik are spoken in Siberia, Greenland, Alaska, and Canada and vary widely

3) These is wide variation between urban and rural people


Eskimos and Snow con’t

Given the technical problems and the rejection of the Whorf/Sapir Hypothesis, why does this idea persist?

Pullum argues that it is a result of intellectual laziness

People are willing to accept and repeat factoids without ever checking their validity


The Origin of the Myth

The first reference in the literature to Eskimos and snow is from Franz Boas in 1911

In making the point that some languages use separate words to refer to related concepts, another can use a single word and modify it

Thus, English has the single word snow which we use to form other words: snow storm, snow house, snow drift, but Eskimo has aput “snow on the ground”, gana “falling snow”


The Origin of the Myth con’t

piqsirpoq “drifting snow” and qimuqsuq “ a snow drift”

Whorf used the Boas reference in 1940 and inflated the number of different kinds of snow, hinting that Eskimos had a word for each one of them and included a connection between the number of words and Eskimos’ conceptual representation of the world.



“To an Eskimo, [a single word for snow] would be almost unthinkable; he would say that falling snow, slushy snow,and so on, are sensuously and operationally different [and so] he uses different words for them and other kinds of snow”

Whorf’s paper has been reprinted many times and is thought to be a “classic”

Notice that his contrast between English and Eskimo is misleading.

English also distinguishes between falling snow and slush



Why should we think that snow feels different to an Eskimo than to someone from the south?

Whereas Boas listed 4 words, Whorf now claims 7 words.

The next culprit is Roger Brown who writes in 1958 in a discussion of Whorf that there are 3 words for snow in Eskimo

We now have sources that claim that there are 3, 4, and 7 words for snow



This establishes a tradition of vacuity to claims about Eskimos and snow

There is no responsibility for getting the number right.

After Roger Brown, the Eskimo example enters the popular culture

In the play The Fifth of July (1978) it is claimed that there are 50 words

In a trivia encyclopedia (1984), the number is 9



In the New York Times (1984), the number is 100

On a weather forecast (1984), the number is 200

In the Science section of the New York Times (1988), it is 4 dozen

The lesson from this is that myths are perpetuated when people do not bother to investigate whether or not they are true

Whorf for example never met a Native American


The Right Answer

In the Dictionary of the West Greenlandic Eskimo Language (1972) it cites just two words

aput “snow on the ground” and qanik “snow in the air”

Linguists who actually work on languages of the North are reluctant to enter the debate because of the technical problems mentioned earlier

If terms like Eskimo, word, and snow are not precisely defined it isn’t possible to answer a question like, How many words does Eskimo have for snow?


The Right Answer con’t

Which language are we talking about?

What is a word?

How do we know that a word really refers to snow?

For example, one of the lists generated in response to Pullum’s paper includes igluksaq said to mean “snow for igloo making”

Actually, it is built from iglu “house” and ksaq “material for” and could be applied to plywood as well.


The Right Answer con’t

If all these technical problems can be worked out then one professional linguist will agree that there are about 12 words for snow.


How Many Words in English?

Suppose that a dialect of Eskimo has 12 words for snow.

Is this interesting? Remarkable?

Can we draw any conclusions from it?

Does it really mean that Eskimos have a special affinity to snow?

Does it distinguish Eskimo in an interesting way from any other language?


How Many Words in English? Con’t

How many words for snow in English?

snow, slush, sleet, blizzard, powder, popcorn, hardpack, crystal, avalanche, flurry, dusting, flake

Borderline: frost, lime, hoar

Does this mean that English speakers also have a special affinity for snow?

How many words in English for hair colour?

blond(e), brunette, towhead, platinum, sandy, redhead, auburn, strawberry blonde, black etc.


How Many Words in English? Con’t

How many words in English for horse?

horse, pony, nag, shetland, colt, foal, steed, dobbin, mare, filly, stallion, gelding, bronco, mustang, broomtail, bay, bayard, chestnut, gray, grizzle, roan, sorrel, pinto, piebald, skewback, calico, paint, etc.

It is unremarkable that fine distinctions are made among objects that we commonly work with or are exposed to

In other words, big deal!


But how many words are there really?

How many Eskimo words for snow are there?

The languages that the Eskimo people speak around the top of the world, in places as far apart as Siberia, Alaska, Canada, and Greenland, differ quite a lot in details of vocabulary.

Brody speaks of his experience living with the Inuit of the eastern Arctic (Canada).


But how many words are there really?

Brody states that the question about snow is, or has become one of phenomenology rather than ethnography.

An ethnographer can explain the ways in which a particular person or group of people describes and responds to and manipulates the world.

A broad humanistic assumption stands behind such work, namely that all people are using the same kind of brain to achieve their particular version of the human task, albeit in varying circumstances


Phenomenology

Pastoralists in the Arabian desert, farmers in the west of Ireland, and Inuit in the High Arctic live in very different circumstances.

They have very different ways of talking about the world.

But according to the ethnographer, if they make the necessary effort, people in each of these societies can learn the language of the others.


Phenomenology con’t

In this view, all languages are intertranslatable, and the meanings that specific circumstances give to words are also communicable

So we can say that the Inuktitut word for the sea bird qaqudluk translated into English as “fulmar”; and we can explain that the Inuit have built into their word the sound a fulmar makes (qaqu) and an infix that signifies wrongness or unpleasantness (dlu), since the fulmar has an unpleasant smelling gland at the base of its bill



that makes it a bird one eats, if at all, only after some careful preparation.

This is a simple example, but a different one would be a matter of degree, not kind. Many words may be necessary to achieve a good translation, but it usually can be done.

Those who challenge this belief in the intertranslatability of languages and cultures often look to the Inuktitut words for snow to argue that the way the world in known in language determines the speaker’s reality



According to this view, the words of the Inuit create the world as well as describe it.

That is to say,those who are not Inuit (or have not been brought up in the language and environment of the Inuit) are unable to know or actually “see” the world that the Inuit know and see.

Another way that this point has been made is in relation to the nature of language itself: a person can explain how a word in used and what it refers to, but the



word’s meaning depends on knowing a web of contexts and concealed related meanings.

A good example is the word “worship”: how can anyone who has not lived in a society that practices some form of religious worship understand what the word really implies?

Therefore, it is held, the language of the Inuit cannot be translated into the language of Qallunaat.



The varieties of snow and ice are things that the Inuit differentiate and talk about.

For example, the language for snow is integral to making decisions that will determine success or failure of hunting, and has vital importance in assessing probable degree of comfort and discomfort, as well as the dangers, of even a short journey.

There is nothing surprising about the richness of Inuktitut when it comes to snow.



There may be grammatical forms in a language, for example the forms in Athabaskan languages, to do with motion and time, that may indeed be difficult for a speaker of Indo-European languages to grasp.

Yet, even in these cases, the difficulty of translation relates to unfamiliarity, not to any seeming intrinsic incomprehensibility.

Learning to use words and grammar presents one kind of problem; learning the meanings of words and the intentions of grammatical devices presents another.



In so far as one can learn the latter, the ethnographic assumption about the intertranslatability of all languages would appear to be sound.

In the debate about whether language creates reality or reality creates language, perhaps we can have our cake and eat it too. There are profound differences between hunter-gatherers and other peoples, and these differences are going to be evidenced in language.

On the other hand languages are for the most part intertranslatable.


Dialects

All speakers of English can talk to each other and pretty much understand each other, yet no two speak exactly the same.

Differences can be due to age, sex, state of health, size, personality, emotional state, and personal idiosyncrasies.

The unique characteristics of the language of an individual speaker are referred to as the speaker’s idiolect.

English may then be said to consist of some 4 000 000 000 idiolects, the approximate number of speakers of English


Dialects con’t

Beyond these individual differences, the language of a group of people may show regular variations formthat used by other groups of speakers of that language.

When the language spoken in different geographical regions and among different social groups shows systematic differences, the groups are said to speak different dialects of the same language.


Dialects con’t

The dialects of a single language may thus be defined as mutually intelligible forms of a language that differ in systematic ways from each other.

Many North Americans encounter British dialects that are so different as to be nearly unintelligible; nevertheless, speakers of all these dialects insist that they are speaking English.

Speakers may eventually be able to detect systematic differences between their dialects


Dialects con’t

However, it is not always easy to decide whether the systematic differences between two speech communities reflect two dialects or two different languages.

A rule-of -thumb: “When dialects become mutually unintelligible these ‘dialects’ become different languages”.

However, to define “mutually intelligible” is itself a difficult task.


Dialects con’t

Examples: Danish/Swedish/Norwegian

Hindi/Urdu

Mandarin/Cantonese

Conclusion:

A clear-cut distinction between language and dialects has evaded linguistic scholars.


Regional Dialects

Dialectal diversity develops when people are separated from each other geographically and socially.

The changes that occur in the language spoken is one are or group do not necessarily spread to another.

Dialect differences tend to increase proportionally to the degree of communicative isolation between groups.

North America and England in the 18th century: communicative isolation


Regional Dialects con’t

The political separation of Canada and the US has encouraged dialectal differences.

Today, isolation is less pronounced because of the mass media, and travel by jet, but even within one country regionalism persists.

No evidence to show that any dialect leveling is occurring.

A change that occurs in one region and fails to spread to other regions of the language community gives rise to dialect differences.


Regional Dialects con’t

When enough such differences give the language spoken in a particular region its own “flavour”, that version of the language is referred to as a regional dialect.

Examples: Boston/Newfoundland


Accents

Regional phonological and phonetic distinctions are often referred to as different accents.

Thus, accent refers to the characteristics of speech that convey information about a speaker’s dialect which may reveal in what country or what part of the country the speaker grew up.


Dialects of North America

The regional dialects of American and Canadian English alike find their roots in the speech of the British colonists who settled North America in the 16th century through the 18th century, so it comes as no surprise to discover that they are alike in many respects, so much so that we may speak of Canadian and American English as part of a larger “North American English”.

Dialectical differences can be found throughout both countries.


Dialects of North America con’t

These differences are the result of:

phonological change

ex. r-less dialects

lexical differences

Do you call it a pail or a bucket? Do you draw water from a faucet or from a spigot? Do you pull down the blinds, the shades, or the curtains when it gets dark? Do you wheel the baby, or do you ride it or roll it? In a baby carriage, a buggy, a coach, or a cab?


African American English

Most of the regional dialects of North America are, to a great extent, free from stigma even though they may be parodied by members of other dialect groups.

One dialect in the US, however, had been a victim of prejudice.

African American English (AAE)

As with any dialect there are systematic differences between AAE and other forms of English, just as there are with Australian and Canadian English etc.


African American English con’t

Phonology of African American English:

A few similarities and differences between AAE and dialects of Canadian English are as follows:


African American English con’t

Syntactic Differences between AAE, AE, and CE

Syntactic differences also exist between dialects. It is the syntactic differences that have often been used to illustrate the “illogic” of AAE, yet just such differences point to the fact that AAE is as syntactically complex and a “logical” as AE or CE.

1) Double Negatives

2) Deletion of the Verb Be

3) Habitual Be

Documents

Ling 100: Week Ten1 Language and Thought Occasionally one hears that the language which one speaks determines how one thinks. Notice that if true, one