4 ms·

On the other side of the ledger, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is widely considered discredited by linguists.

skytreader 5y ago
Has it? I'm genuinely curious to know. "Widely considered discredited" sounds like it's met the same fate as ether or alchemy. I commented on SWH a few months ago in HN too when another user, claiming background in linguistics, replied that it factors in your world view but not as huge a factor as other cultural considerations. That sounded reasonable. So as of the last time I looked up SWH (a few months ago), my knowledge of its consensus is that: - the weak form ("relativism") is true to a certain extent, and definitely not to the extent Whorf originally proposed. - the strong form ("determinism") is largely debated and, personally, I think it's indefensible as a thesis.
- emodendroket 5y ago
  When I took linguistics classes in school it was summarily brushed off, but here's how Wikipedia summarizes: > The strong version, or linguistic determinism, says that language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories. This version is generally agreed to be false by modern linguists. > The weak version says that linguistic categories and usage only influence thought and decisions. Research on weaker forms has produced positive empirical evidence for a relationship.
  - coldtea 5y ago
    Well, DUH! Did anybody put forward the first version which sounds like a strawman? "language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories. This version is generally agreed to be false by modern linguists" The use of words like "determine" appears to make it look bogus. Whereas "influences" basically means the same thing (in practical terms, strongly influences is just as good as determines).
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      Well, based on my own introspection, the strong version looks obviously true to me - so I'm glad someone took time to disprove it. When I read the description, I understand "determines" as in, your thoughts internally work in terms of language processing, so their complexity is limited to the complexity of the language(s) you know. It sounds plausible, but also testable by checking if humans who never learned a language with complex grammar are capable of processing complex concepts.
      - formerly_proven 5y ago
        For a long time in human history people did not accept the existence of negative numbers; a Greek mathematician couldn't solve x+1=0 for example (this one also has "zero" in it, which also did not exist for some mathematicians). This seems like a decent example for linguistic categories limiting the thinkable categories. Other Greek examples: Zeno's paradoxes, irrational numbers, ...
        coldtea 5y ago
        >This seems like a decent example for linguistic categories limiting the thinkable categories. As in absolutely limiting them, though? Like the Ancient Greeks, those who invented zero, didn't have it previously in their language, and couldn't do zero-based equations before either.
        emodendroket 5y ago
        Seems like a bad one. New concepts are given new names, or borrowed names, when they’re introduced. The first guy to come up with zero didn’t speak a language with a word for zero at the time.
      - coldtea 5y ago
        >I'm glad someone took time to disprove it What do you think "disprove" means in this context though? E.g. do you think they really settled anything, the way we can prove a math theorem or verify some physical theory to hold (as a predictive model) to the nth degree of precision? >When I read the description, I understand "determines" as in, your thoughts internally work in terms of language processing, so their complexity is limited to the complexity of the language(s) you know. That would mean that developing further language is impossible or even that developing the first languages would be impossible - as those nearly language-less peoples have no means to develop those more complex later concepts. It's not like e.g. Europeans (let's take them as a model of "advanced" language) emerged in nature in fully formed ancient Greek, Latin, English, French, etc. They started with the same or even more "constrained" languages (verbally and conceptually) as any primitive people, and - going back to our forefathers - even language-less.
- _emacsomancer_ 5y ago
  Alchemy is a bit more reasonable. Even the weak version falls apart under scrutiny. Here's a nice example of this: https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/web.sas.upenn.edu/dist/4/81/files/2017/07/Li-Gleitman-2002_Turning-the-tables-170dkdr.pdf https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/web.sas.upenn.edu/dist/4/81/fi... This is a good example of a case where there was a phenomenon (a language prominently using non-speaker-oriented direction terms, and correlations with real-world behaviour of speakers of that language) which seemed to support a weak version of SW, but it turns that seemingly supporting evidence was really just a by-product of the testing environment.
  - skytreader 5y ago
    I'm not sure how the study you linked is an indictment of the weak version. It seems to fall well under my understanding of the consensus that the weak version is only true to a certain extent and definitely not to the extent Sapir and Whorf originally claimed. So this does present an interesting result, and one that (AFAICT---I am not a linguist by training) does run counter to the claims of SWH but, more importantly, the study is limited only to spatial reasoning. Surely there are more areas of thought than that?
    - _emacsomancer_ 5y ago
      The study shows that differences in systems of direction words doesn't really affect spatial reasoning. Yes, this one study doesn't disprove every aspect of SWH, but it's a good example of how SWH claims, even in the weaker versions, tend to fare when subject to more rigorous investigation & analysis. What area of thought do you think provides good evidence for (some version of) the SWH?
      - lanstin 5y ago
        Given that language is also created or modified by people in order to get their ideas across, wouldn’t it make sense if one can have thoughts arise that don’t fit into language but then they cannot be shared without the creation of appropriate language. I often have the experience of having ideas that I have in a sort of mathematical reasoning space (this here makes that there impossible) that I have to translate into English. (Eg If the the call is routed at the IP layer then they can’t reach this no matter what DNS they have access to)
alisonkisk 5y ago
Only an extremely strong version of the hypothesis is discredited, and that's because humans can create new languages to help their thoughts. But that's not an argument for a single static language being sufficient.
coldtea 5y ago
On the other hand, it's not like linguists are doing exactly a hard science, and their discrediting something means much, especially when it touches totally unrelated domains like psychology and neuroscience.
- emodendroket 5y ago
  If we want to take this into a more concrete and measurable realm, every programming language is going to get converted into the same machine code before it is run, so it is quite untrue that there is any idea that "cannot be expressed" in one programming language but can be expressed in another. It may be more or less convenient to do but nothing like the strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis for human languages.
  - coldtea 5y ago
    Well, in programming yes. Though even in programming, there are e.g. non turing complete languages (e.g. simple regex languages), languages without certain high level facilities (making it much harder to organize your code in terms of certain concepts - analogous to organizing your thinking of the world around certain concepts -, which is a SWH-like effect), languages that can't express e.g. infinite loops and are certain to terminate (used e.g. for business logic, templating, etc), and so on. Even if it all goes down to assembly, a language like Cobol might it much harder to write e.g. a 3D game. And that can be enough for games not be written in that language - it doesn't have to be impossible, just hard, which is enough to discourage most, aside from a few weirdos writing games in Cobol and compilers in bash.
- _emacsomancer_ 5y ago
  Sometimes, when it's a field well outside of your area of expertise, not making pronouncements can save embarrassment later on.
  - coldtea 5y ago
    My sentiments exactly (only on the other side). You seem to respect everything labeled academic, but not all "areas of expertise" and not all "fields" are equally valid -- and surely not just because they are taught in universities, written about in "peer reviewed" journals, and so on. Linguistics is closer to soft sciences than the opposite.

Has it? I'm genuinely curious to know. "Widely considered discredited" sounds like it's met the same fate as ether or alchemy. I commented on SWH a few months ago in HN too when another user, claiming background in linguistics, replied that it factors in your world view but not as huge a factor as other cultural considerations. That sounded reasonable. So as of the last time I looked up SWH (a few months ago), my knowledge of its consensus is that: - the weak form ("relativism") is true to a certain extent, and definitely not to the extent Whorf originally proposed. - the strong form ("determinism") is largely debated and, personally, I think it's indefensible as a thesis.

emodendroket 5y ago
When I took linguistics classes in school it was summarily brushed off, but here's how Wikipedia summarizes: > The strong version, or linguistic determinism, says that language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories. This version is generally agreed to be false by modern linguists. > The weak version says that linguistic categories and usage only influence thought and decisions. Research on weaker forms has produced positive empirical evidence for a relationship.
- coldtea 5y ago
  Well, DUH! Did anybody put forward the first version which sounds like a strawman? "language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories. This version is generally agreed to be false by modern linguists" The use of words like "determine" appears to make it look bogus. Whereas "influences" basically means the same thing (in practical terms, strongly influences is just as good as determines).
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    Well, based on my own introspection, the strong version looks obviously true to me - so I'm glad someone took time to disprove it. When I read the description, I understand "determines" as in, your thoughts internally work in terms of language processing, so their complexity is limited to the complexity of the language(s) you know. It sounds plausible, but also testable by checking if humans who never learned a language with complex grammar are capable of processing complex concepts.
    - formerly_proven 5y ago
      For a long time in human history people did not accept the existence of negative numbers; a Greek mathematician couldn't solve x+1=0 for example (this one also has "zero" in it, which also did not exist for some mathematicians). This seems like a decent example for linguistic categories limiting the thinkable categories. Other Greek examples: Zeno's paradoxes, irrational numbers, ...
      - coldtea 5y ago
        >This seems like a decent example for linguistic categories limiting the thinkable categories. As in absolutely limiting them, though? Like the Ancient Greeks, those who invented zero, didn't have it previously in their language, and couldn't do zero-based equations before either.
      - emodendroket 5y ago
        Seems like a bad one. New concepts are given new names, or borrowed names, when they’re introduced. The first guy to come up with zero didn’t speak a language with a word for zero at the time.
    - coldtea 5y ago
      >I'm glad someone took time to disprove it What do you think "disprove" means in this context though? E.g. do you think they really settled anything, the way we can prove a math theorem or verify some physical theory to hold (as a predictive model) to the nth degree of precision? >When I read the description, I understand "determines" as in, your thoughts internally work in terms of language processing, so their complexity is limited to the complexity of the language(s) you know. That would mean that developing further language is impossible or even that developing the first languages would be impossible - as those nearly language-less peoples have no means to develop those more complex later concepts. It's not like e.g. Europeans (let's take them as a model of "advanced" language) emerged in nature in fully formed ancient Greek, Latin, English, French, etc. They started with the same or even more "constrained" languages (verbally and conceptually) as any primitive people, and - going back to our forefathers - even language-less.
_emacsomancer_ 5y ago
Alchemy is a bit more reasonable. Even the weak version falls apart under scrutiny. Here's a nice example of this: https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/web.sas.upenn.edu/dist/4/81/files/2017/07/Li-Gleitman-2002_Turning-the-tables-170dkdr.pdf https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/web.sas.upenn.edu/dist/4/81/fi... This is a good example of a case where there was a phenomenon (a language prominently using non-speaker-oriented direction terms, and correlations with real-world behaviour of speakers of that language) which seemed to support a weak version of SW, but it turns that seemingly supporting evidence was really just a by-product of the testing environment.
- skytreader 5y ago
  I'm not sure how the study you linked is an indictment of the weak version. It seems to fall well under my understanding of the consensus that the weak version is only true to a certain extent and definitely not to the extent Sapir and Whorf originally claimed. So this does present an interesting result, and one that (AFAICT---I am not a linguist by training) does run counter to the claims of SWH but, more importantly, the study is limited only to spatial reasoning. Surely there are more areas of thought than that?
  - _emacsomancer_ 5y ago
    The study shows that differences in systems of direction words doesn't really affect spatial reasoning. Yes, this one study doesn't disprove every aspect of SWH, but it's a good example of how SWH claims, even in the weaker versions, tend to fare when subject to more rigorous investigation & analysis. What area of thought do you think provides good evidence for (some version of) the SWH?
    - lanstin 5y ago
      Given that language is also created or modified by people in order to get their ideas across, wouldn’t it make sense if one can have thoughts arise that don’t fit into language but then they cannot be shared without the creation of appropriate language. I often have the experience of having ideas that I have in a sort of mathematical reasoning space (this here makes that there impossible) that I have to translate into English. (Eg If the the call is routed at the IP layer then they can’t reach this no matter what DNS they have access to)

alisonkisk 5y ago

Only an extremely strong version of the hypothesis is discredited, and that's because humans can create new languages to help their thoughts. But that's not an argument for a single static language being sufficient.

coldtea 5y ago

On the other hand, it's not like linguists are doing exactly a hard science, and their discrediting something means much, especially when it touches totally unrelated domains like psychology and neuroscience.

emodendroket 5y ago
If we want to take this into a more concrete and measurable realm, every programming language is going to get converted into the same machine code before it is run, so it is quite untrue that there is any idea that "cannot be expressed" in one programming language but can be expressed in another. It may be more or less convenient to do but nothing like the strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis for human languages.
- coldtea 5y ago
  Well, in programming yes. Though even in programming, there are e.g. non turing complete languages (e.g. simple regex languages), languages without certain high level facilities (making it much harder to organize your code in terms of certain concepts - analogous to organizing your thinking of the world around certain concepts -, which is a SWH-like effect), languages that can't express e.g. infinite loops and are certain to terminate (used e.g. for business logic, templating, etc), and so on. Even if it all goes down to assembly, a language like Cobol might it much harder to write e.g. a 3D game. And that can be enough for games not be written in that language - it doesn't have to be impossible, just hard, which is enough to discourage most, aside from a few weirdos writing games in Cobol and compilers in bash.
_emacsomancer_ 5y ago
Sometimes, when it's a field well outside of your area of expertise, not making pronouncements can save embarrassment later on.
- coldtea 5y ago
  My sentiments exactly (only on the other side). You seem to respect everything labeled academic, but not all "areas of expertise" and not all "fields" are equally valid -- and surely not just because they are taught in universities, written about in "peer reviewed" journals, and so on. Linguistics is closer to soft sciences than the opposite.