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> 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 dis
by 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 agoHaving 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 agoThanks. 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.