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* Linguistic Determinism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_determinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_determinism * Neural Darwinism - https
by austincheney 8y ago
* Linguistic Determinism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_determinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_determinism
* Neural Darwinism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_Darwinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_Darwinism
* Eskimo words for snow - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow
It has been largely established that language structures shape how the brain organizes cognitive reasoning, which in turn shapes the brain and vise versa.
It is less well established that language shapes the data processing of the 5 senses. This is largely due to the trouble of defining what is a distinctive word when comparing languages and relating the resulting vocabulary distinctions to perceptual distinctions in an objective way.
- enriquto 8y agoIf anything, your link to "exkimo words for snow" seems to mostly disprove what you are stating in your message.
- austincheney 8y agoHow so?
- enriquto 8y agoIt explains that inuit languages do not actually have more words for snow than other languages. The other link explains that linguistic determinism is a superseded theory that can not be used to accurately model language. The "X words for snow" is even a sort of running joke as the cliché example of crackpot theory among linguists (see snowclone).
- austincheney 8y agoThe second paragraph in my original post literally talks about vocabulary limitations exactly the same as you are describing. Linguistic determinism doesn't seek to model language.
- bloak 8y agoIt's a cliché among journalists rather than a theory among linguists. According to that Wikipedia article, it's the Sami languages that have lots of words for snow, though it all critically depends on what you mean by "word", "snow", "language", "have", ... The question "How many words for snow does language X have?" is impossible to answer for many different reasons.
- toolslive 8y agoYou're right: the answer for Dutch or German would be 'infinite' because these languages allow you to compose (new) words on the fly, using other nouns as prefix. The first example I came up with after 0.05s of thought was "autosneeuw" (car snow) which could mean the snow you find on top of a car.