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>As a linguistics major, you're no stranger to the idea that a person is only capable of having thoughts and ideas that can be expressed in their language As a
by RyanMcGreal 17y ago
>As a linguistics major, you're no stranger to the idea that a person is only capable of having thoughts and ideas that can be expressed in their language
As a linguistics major, you have no excuse for not knowing that Sapir-Whorf is utterly discredited.
- scott_s 17y agoReplying to your post in the recent discussion, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1033741 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1033741, I don't understand your reasoning. Sure, you can extend a language introduce a concept. But the lack of that concept can still have molded speakers' thinking.
- ubernostrum 17y agoThe problem is that there isn't one "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis". There's a spectrum of such hypotheses, running the gamut from the mild "language has an affect on how we think" up to the extreme "if your language uses the same word for blue and green then you'll be blue/green colorblind". The extreme forms have been rather thoroughly debunked at this point. The milder forms verge on tautologies.
- RyanMcGreal 17y ago>The milder forms verge on tautologies. Exactly. The hypothesis is clearly false in any articulation strong enough to matter.
- scott_s 17y agoWhat is the weakest articulation that you think is clearly false?