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Great find, thanks for sharing. It's important to note that the case of the Pirahã doesn't salvage the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Whereas Whorf posited that the a
by RyanMcGreal 17y ago
Great find, thanks for sharing.
It's important to note that the case of the Pirahã doesn't salvage the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Whereas Whorf posited that the absence of a word for a given concept in a language means the people who speak that language cannot think about the concept, the evidence of the Pirahã seems to suggest the reverse: that the reason they don't have words for certain concepts is that they don't think about them.
- ytinas 17y agoBut this is circular. They don't think about it because they don't have a word to describe it... because they don't think about it....
- RyanMcGreal 17y agoNonsense. Extending a language to denote new concepts is easy. You can borrow a word from another language (ennui, schadenfreude); you can repurpose an existing word (broadcast, which once meant to stand in your field and throw seeds in every direction); and you can coin a new word (Twas brilling, and the slivy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe). The Pirahã don't have words for concepts that fall outside their cultural worldview for the simple reason that they have no need of such words.
- ytinas 17y agoBut they've been exposed to other concepts, perhaps these new concepts don't become important because they don't understand them. :)