Whorfian Hypothesis
Whorfian HypothesisEditHint: RefactorByMerging with SapirWhorfHypothesis.
From the The University of Alberta's Cognitive Science Dictionary ...
Linguistic determination is the argument that language directly affects that way that people think about and see the world. Linguistic determination is also known as the Whorfian hypothesis or the SapirWhorfHypothesis (Sapir, 1968; Whorf, 1956). Whorf provides the example of the Eskimo words for snow. The Eskimo people are inhabitants of the Arctic. Whereas in the English language there is only one word for snow the Eskimo language has many words for snow. Whorf argues that this language for snow allows the Eskimo people to "see" snow differently than speakers of other languages who do not have as many words for snow. That is, Eskimo people see subtle differences in snow that other people do not.
http://web.psych.ualberta.ca/~mike/Pearl_Street/Dictionary/contents/L/linguistic_determination.html
Regarding the "Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax", StevenPinker of MIT says:
"Contrary to popular belief, the Eskimos do not have more words for snow than do speakers of English. They do not have four hundred words for snow, as it has been claimed in print, or two hundred, or one hundred, or forty-eight, or even nine. One dictionary puts the figure at two. Counting generously, experts can come up with about a dozen, but by such standards English would not be far behind, with snow, sleet, slush, blizzard, avalanche, hail, hardpack, powder, flurry, dusting ..."
"Where did the myth come from? Not from anyone who has actually studied the Yupik and Inuit-Inupiaq families of polysynthetic languages spoken from Siberia to Greenland. The anthropologist Laura Martin has documented how the story grew like an urban legend, exaggerated with each retelling. In 1911, Boas casually mentioned that Eskimos used four unrelated word roots for snow. Whorf embellished the count to seven and implied that there were more. His article was widely reprinted, then cited in textbooks and popular books on language, which led to successively inflated estimates in other textbooks, articles and newspaper columns of Amazing Facts." (TheLanguageInstinct, ISBN 0-06-097651-9 , Steven Pinker, p 64.)
-- RonJeffries
Well, yes, the truth as usual lies critically wounded and neglected somewhere in between...
There is a strong case to be made for real and significant variations in scope and precision of meaning in different languages. A given language usually (but not always) reflects the needs of the people speaking it, in terms of describing and defining their perceived reality and cultural heritage. This means that a concept which is adequately covered by one or two words in one language, may be finely split up in many in another. (It may also be a bit more complex than this simplification suggests to map the conceptual spaces between the languages.)
What the "x words for A in language AA" argument/legend totally misses is the context, the fact that speakers in language A must be more precise in their description of whatever, than speakers in language BB, because their language (for whatever reason) requires this to be able to talk about the subject at all. Most languages show such required "extra" precision at least somewhere compared to other languages, sometimes even incorporating words which are quite literally "untranslatable" outside of the cultural context.
(Discussion even valid for computer languages.)
Extra precision in a language is a trade-off, since it requires extra effort to analyze the situation before making a statement about it. In Russian for example, you cannot simply say "I'm going to the theatre." without making a number of specific decisions about e.g. whether you will in fact be going inside the building, going there and back again or staying, etc. before choosing the words. Other languages and other situation show comparable constraints, compared to the loose and general way one may be used to thinking of such things in one's own language. -- BoLeuf
( ... see TheTruthLiesInBetween)
A common phrase on Usenet: "If your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
I'm sure it's certainly possible to think of things that don't yet have words, but I'm also sure the words make it easier and that the mind is attracted towards the easiest path. So language influences but doesn't quite determine thought. The words stand in for a larger number of other words. A bit like AbstractDataType(s) in the programming language of the mind. You can program with ADTs, of course, but it's harder.
Another apposite aphorism: "A language which doesn't change the way you think isn't worth learning."
-- DaveHarris
See also WholeSortOfGeneralMishMash
Not only is it possible to think of things that don't yet have words, it is necessary to think about things sufficiently, before there are words for them, in order to come up with the 'thing-ness' to attach a word to. I.e., there is a necessary, and documented, "amorphous" thinking zone, where the need for the word has not yet shown up, but thinking about the matter is clearly going on. RalphHodgson, in his wonderful library of obscure books, has a book on it, SketchesOfThought. -- AlistairCockburn
True, but in collaborative exercises (as much of programming and design is meant to be) being able to communicate a concept is key. It's difficult without words, hence the rise of Patterns.
MathematicalNotation certainly affects your ability to perceive and solve a problem - just try dividing numbers written in Roman numerals. If you only know how to represent powers diagrammatically, then squaring and cubing is all you can express... you can't describe n^4,n^5,n^6... Algebra and symbolic computation certainly do depend on the expressive power of your language.
--
That's polymorphism for you - the ability to treat things that are different as if they were the same. In "33", the first 3 is different to the second because it really means 30, but our multiplication routine treats them the same. The difference is later restored (using the digit's position) - an early example of the FlyweightPattern.
Some of the issues we deal with in writing software are fundamental, and similar to the issues the brain deals with when thinking. -- DaveHarris
I (MariusAmadoAlves) have found one single author (among thousands) who totally refutes LinguisticDetermination?: Amorey Gethin, in a book most appropriately entitled Antilinguistics: a critical assessment of modern linguistic theory and practice ISBN 1871516005 . It is a good book, very militant. Although I agree that the truth is somewhere in the middle, Gethin is in a minority and therefore has to speak louder, which he does. Here is a fulcral passage:
According to current ideas, the brain is fairly modular, with specialized subsystems for vision, language etc. It seems these modules can be used for thought, too, so that people can think in pictures, think in words etc. For example, the time taken to answer questions like "Is this 3D object the same as that object after a rotation?" depends on the angle, which suggests there is something like an internal 3D model being used as (at least) a tool of thought.
Thus some thought is based on language, and some isn't. -- DaveHarris
To call an internal 3D model "thought" is a stretch. Can you change the pattern of the thought or are you bound to the restrictions of your experience? I cannot visualize a hypercube rotation, except perhaps as some combination of visual experiences that I have had <insert gif>. The importance of thought is the creation not recreation of symbols. While it may be true that not all thought is based in language, this reflects only the degree to which our language development is trailing our thought. As humanity develops, language will standardize upon words for the currently unverbalizable. -- MarkLuffel?
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