4 ms·

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

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.
  - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
    > Well, DUH! Did anybody put forward the first version which sounds like a strawman? A lot of proto-linguistic (I say proto because linguistics want a real discipline yet) thought in the '50s-'60s did actually believe this. It was the informal basis for teaching lots of colonized peoples Western languages. It was the basis for the book 1984's Newspeak. It was also the hypothesis that motivated the creation of the Loglan (predecessor to the more well known, but still obscure, language Lojban) language. That you find this to be a strawman argument is a good testament to how widespread the knowledge of its disproval has become. N.B. I also think in the pop programming language world (e.g. Twitter rants) that a lot of folks genuinely believe something similar to Strong Sapir-Whorf, at least as applied to programming languages.
    - ScottBurson 5y ago
      Having actually worked with James Cooke Brown on Loglan (I wrote the first Yacc grammar for it), I have to say my recollection is that Jim's view was more tentative and nuanced than you've made it sound. While we certainly enjoyed finding things that seemed easier to say in Loglan than English, I don't recall him ever suggesting that there might be a thought that a non-Loglan speaker couldn't think. I think it would be fairer to say that he was convinced that Whorfian effects were strong enough that there would be value in engineering a language to take advantage of them. But while value is somewhat in the eye of the beholder, I would say this hypothesis has not held up well either.
      - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
        Thanks. My understanding was that Loglan was simply a mechanism to play around with the Sapir-Whorf theory among humans, but thanks for the additional context/correction.
_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)

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.
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  > Well, DUH! Did anybody put forward the first version which sounds like a strawman? A lot of proto-linguistic (I say proto because linguistics want a real discipline yet) thought in the '50s-'60s did actually believe this. It was the informal basis for teaching lots of colonized peoples Western languages. It was the basis for the book 1984's Newspeak. It was also the hypothesis that motivated the creation of the Loglan (predecessor to the more well known, but still obscure, language Lojban) language. That you find this to be a strawman argument is a good testament to how widespread the knowledge of its disproval has become. N.B. I also think in the pop programming language world (e.g. Twitter rants) that a lot of folks genuinely believe something similar to Strong Sapir-Whorf, at least as applied to programming languages.
  - ScottBurson 5y ago
    Having actually worked with James Cooke Brown on Loglan (I wrote the first Yacc grammar for it), I have to say my recollection is that Jim's view was more tentative and nuanced than you've made it sound. While we certainly enjoyed finding things that seemed easier to say in Loglan than English, I don't recall him ever suggesting that there might be a thought that a non-Loglan speaker couldn't think. I think it would be fairer to say that he was convinced that Whorfian effects were strong enough that there would be value in engineering a language to take advantage of them. But while value is somewhat in the eye of the beholder, I would say this hypothesis has not held up well either.
    - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
      Thanks. My understanding was that Loglan was simply a mechanism to play around with the Sapir-Whorf theory among humans, but thanks for the additional context/correction.

_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)