Language and Thought

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.

2
Language and Thought cont

• 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 peoples 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

3
Language and Thought cont

• The implication is heavy the foundational
  categories of reality are not in the world but
  are imposed by ones 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

4
Language and Thought cont

• 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

5
Language and Thought cont

• 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

6
Language and Thought cont

• 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 wasnt exactly what we meant to
  say.
• To have that feeling, there would have to be a

7
Language and Thought cont

• 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?

8
The Hopi and Time

• So let us look at Whorfs 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.

9
The Hopi and Time cont

• 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.

10
The Hopi and Time cont

• 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.

11
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?

12
Eskimos and Snowcont

• 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

13
Eskimos and Snow cont

• 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

14
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

15
The Origin of the Myth cont

• 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.

16
The Origin of the Myth cont

• 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
• Whorfs 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

17
The Origin of the Myth cont

• 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

18
The Origin of the Myth cont

• 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

19
The Origin of the Myth cont

• 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

20
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 isnt possible to answer a
  question like, How many words does Eskimo have
  for snow?

21
The Right Answer cont

• 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 Pullums 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.

22
The Right Answer cont

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

23
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?

24
How Many Words in English? Cont

• 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.

25
How Many Words in English? Cont

• 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!

26
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).

27
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

28
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.

29
Phenomenology cont

• 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

30
Phenomenology cont

• 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 speakers reality

31
Phenomenology cont

• 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

32
Phenomenology cont

• words 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.

33
Phenomenology cont

• 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.

34
Phenomenology cont

• 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.

35
Phenomenology cont

• 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.

36
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
  speakers idiolect.
• English may then be said to consist of some 4 000
  000 000 idiolects, the approximate number of
  speakers of English

37
Dialects cont

• 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.

38
Dialects cont

• 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

39
Dialects cont

• 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.

40
Dialects cont

• Examples Danish/Swedish/Norwegian
• Hindi/Urdu
• Mandarin/Cantonese
• Conclusion
• A clear-cut distinction between language and
  dialects has evaded linguistic scholars.

41
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

42
Regional Dialects cont

• 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.

43
Regional Dialects cont

• 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

44
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
  speakers dialect which may reveal in what
  country or what part of the country the speaker
  grew up.

45
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.

46
Dialects of North America cont

• 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?

47
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.

48
African American English cont

• Phonology of African American English
• A few similarities and differences between AAE
  and dialects of Canadian English are as follows

49
African American English cont

• 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