http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic … shape-what
"... But the Pirahă can't count. They don't have number words.
This suggests a different way of thinking about the influence of language on thought: words are very handy mnemonics. We may not be able to remember what seventeen spools looks like, but we can remember the word seventeen. In his landmark The Language of Thought, philosopher Jerry Fodor argued that many words work like acronyms. French students use the acronym bans to remember which adjectives go before nouns ("Beauty, Age, Number, Goodneess, and Size"). Similarly, sometimes its easier to remember a word (calculus, Estonia) than what the word stands for. We use the word, knowing that should it becomes necessary, we can search through our minds -- or an encyclopedia -- and pull up the relevant information (how to calculate an integral; Estonia's population, capital and location on a map). Numbers, it seems, work the same way."
Bonus: http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic … at-you-say - You Are What You Say
"... When people try to present themselves a certain way, they tend to select what they think are appropriate nouns and verbs, but they are unlikely to control their use of articles and pronouns. These small words create the style of a text, which is less subject to conscious manipulation.
Pennebaker’s statistical analyses have shown that these small words may hint at the healing progress of patients and give us insight into the personalities and changing ideals of public figures, from political candidates to terrorists. “Virtually no one in psychology has realized that low-level words can give clues to large-scale behaviors,” says Pennebaker, who, with colleagues, developed a computer program that analyzes text, called Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC, pronounced “Luke”). The software has been used to examine other speech characteristics as well, tallying up nouns and verbs in hundreds of categories to expose buried patterns."
Last edited by nest0r (2009 August 20, 9:38 pm)
Jarvik7
Member
From: 名古屋
Registered: 2007-03-05
Posts: 3946
ocircle wrote:
I'm still surprised that English does not have a word that means "to not know."
There is "ignorant", but it has become a loaded word.
Language doesn't shape what we think. The way a culture thinks shapes their language. If you are talking about a second language one wasn't raised with, then changing one's way of thinking to match the target culture would potentially improve language ability.
Last edited by Jarvik7 (2009 August 21, 1:39 am)
wccrawford
Member
From: FL US
Registered: 2008-03-28
Posts: 1551
Yes. Next question?
Okay, a little more then. If you can't express a concept in your language, then it most certainly does shape the way you think.
Taken a step further, the more Japanese I learn, the more different concepts I enter into my brain, since Japanese wasn't formed the same way English was. Spanish did the same, to a lesser extent, since the base language was the same as English.
I expect that learning Russian and Gaelic and Chinese will also expand my mind, if I ever get around to them.
The acronym section of the excerpt got me to thinking about this: http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pid=70130#p70130 and the nature of retrieval cues and 'chunking'... wondering if I shouldn't start thinking of ways to increase 'associational fluency', &c., by thinking about vocabulary acquisition a bit differently. (Well, my idea of 'associational fluency, not sure if the linked definitions really captures the original definitions, I mean more than 'thinking of synonyms' -- just the associative ability in general, is what I'm thinking, being able to use definitions to make adept associations of meaning and usage.)
Last edited by nest0r (2009 August 21, 6:11 am)
liosama
Member
From: sydney
Registered: 2008-03-02
Posts: 896
Jarvik7 wrote:
Language doesn't shape what we think. The way a culture thinks shapes their language.
The second part can be true, and the first part can be false it is not really all that clear really. They are not opposites of each other, having one true doesn't mean you can't have the other true either. Is not a culture characterized by its language, and is it not most likely that they grew together, perhaps with culture growing at a faster pace, regardless they still grew together.
It's certainly not an easy question to answer and has been thrown in circulatory arguments from a long long time ago.
I will start out with what I believe to be obvious. Ones 'language level', most certainly shapes the way one thinks. By this I mean one with a very extensive vocabulary and grammar structure has more 'tools' on which to build and progress his/her thoughts as opposed to someone almost mute. There was a similar thread I forgot where it was or what the title was about but I made a post wrt to Orwell in '1984' on the concept of word emission and simplification in the authoritarian state and how that really can narrow down ones thoughts, he had a really nice way of putting it in 1984.
But the more complex question of different languages affecting thought is a little difficult, a quick google search shows this question ain't an uncommon one at all and is very very interesting.
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/borodit … index.html
See the tests done on Aboriginal speakers for example, you could well and truly argue that it is a cultural aspect that makes the Aboriginals organise the the temporal photos in the way they do.
but read the full article, it's pretty interesting.
Last edited by liosama (2009 August 21, 10:10 am)
Come to think of it, when I was taking a linguistics class, we had spent a day discussing the relationship between the development of a language and the number of colors that can be named. Some younger languages only have words to describe red, blue, and black. In Japanese and Korean, for the longest while there must had been the absence of a word for "green," which is still evident in today's use of language (People say stuff like "The mountains are blue" "The trees are blue" to express that they are green and lively.)
