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> That's an assumption. The contrary view is that language is just part of the I/O system, not where the hard work gets done. FYI, this is the [Sapir-Whorf hyp

> That's an assumption. The contrary view is that language is just part of the I/O system, not where the hard work gets done. FYI, this is the [Sapir-Whorf hypothesis](1) > We lack some fundamental understanding about how to interact with the real world. The problem is not on the language side. This is to a significant extent a sensing issue, not a understanding issue. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

tsimionescu 5y ago
The Sappir-Whorf hypothesis refers to specific languages, and is all but proven wrong in its strong form (a person speaking English and a person speaking Japanese seem to perform exactly the same at all cognitive tasks). But there is a different theory, due to Noam Chomsky I believe, that language in the general sense is in fact our mechanism for higher thought, with communication being just a secondary function[0]. I believe that this is the theory that the GP was combatting with the animal example. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEmpRtj34xg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEmpRtj34xg
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis refers to specific languages, and is all but proven wrong in its strong form (a person speaking English and a person speaking Japanese seem to perform exactly the same at all cognitive tasks). Japanese people show extremely high performance at "spatial awareness" tasks compared to whites.[1] So on average this isn't true. But it's true that there does not appear to be any benefit from either language -- Japanese-speaking Japanese show no advantage over English-speaking Japanese. [1] On white-normed IQ tests, East Asians generally show a bit of underperformance (relative to European whites) on verbal tasks and gigantic overperformance on spatial tasks, which is traditionally averaged out to an average IQ score moderately above that of whites. Interestingly, Native Americans show the same slant -- much much stronger spatial than verbal performance -- but at a lower base level.
  - xwolfi 5y ago
    And that is due to the language and not, say, the writing tradition ? If we kept the same languages and made japanese people write it massively in 26 half sound symbols and made all of what you call a white european population use 3k+ ideogram drawings for word starting at 3 years old, do you think we d see exactly the same performance ? I bet you the writing tradition is very influencial when it varies so much and has no relationship with language, especially in Japanese where they frankensteined Chinese symbols over centuries which must require an enormous mental gymnastics and redirect large processing power vs someone who can read and write everything he hears relatively simply?
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      > And that is due to the language and not, say, the writing tradition ? No, neither. > If we kept the same languages and made japanese people write it massively in 26 half sound symbols and made all of what you call a white european population use 3k+ ideogram drawings for word starting at 3 years old, do you think we d see exactly the same performance ? Yes, the influence of spoken and written language appears to be zero. I mentioned this.
- mistermann 5y ago
  > The Sappir-Whorf hypothesis refers to specific languages, and is all but proven wrong in its strong form (a person speaking English and a person speaking Japanese seem to perform exactly the same at all cognitive tasks). I believe it's a bit more complicated than this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referent > In fields such as semantics, semiotics, and the theory of reference, a distinction is made between a referent and a reference. Reference is a relationship in which a symbol or sign (a word, for example) signifies something; the referent is the thing signified. The referent may be an actual person or object, or may be something more abstract, such as a set of actions. > Reference and referents were considered at length in the 1923 book The Meaning of Meaning by the Cambridge scholars C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards. Ogden has pointed out that reference is a psychological process, and that referents themselves may be psychological – existing in the imagination of the referrer, and not necessarily in the real world. For further ideas related to this observation, see failure to refer. In this case, what has been ~"proven wrong" is Whorf's specific hypothesis (the reference) of the underlying phenomenon (the referent) that he was observing, whereas the general notion of whether language fundamentally/substantially affects cognition seems to remain unknown. As a thought experiment: imagine a culture where this psychological phenomenon of "referent" is a "first class" concept in a language, and the culture that uses it insists that the distinction must be at least taken into consideration whenever a disagreement arises between two or more people....after several decades under such a model, might substantial differences arise? Perhaps this isn't a "proper" example of Whorfism, but it seems to be in the neighbourhood.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    Well, I would say that in your thought experiment it's actually the culture that could produce a substantial difference in cognition, whereas the langauge is merely a consequence of that culture. For example, there are some Australian langauges if I remember correctly where instead of words for left, right, ahead, behind (relative positioning) they use words for something similar to north/south/east/west (absolute positioning) - as in, "give me that cup to your northeast". This of course requires a habit of keeping track of your absolute positioning at all times. However, you will not gain this ability or habit just by learning the langauge. In fact, your langauge can even express that same thing today. Instead, you will be unable to naturally use their langauge unless and until you get into the habit of keeping track of your absolute positioning. Similarly, the people growing up in this culture may not easily learn what we mean by left and right, but they would not gain the ability to understand these concepts merely by learning English - instead, they would naturally speak English while avoiding left/right references, or simply make more mistakes than someone growing in a culture where relative positioning is the preferred form of communication.
slibhb 5y ago
I interpret what you quoted as the opposite of Sapir-Whorf. Could you explain why they're the same?
- Mezzie 5y ago
  I am also quite confused. My understanding (it's been a while since I studied Linguistics) is that strong Sapir-Whorf refers to the argument that what actions your brain can take are constrained by your native language(s). So by strong Sapir-Whorf, the distinction between the French savoir and connaitre should make zero sense to me since that distinction isn't found in English. Weak Sapir-Whorf says the distinction wouldn't make sense until I learned words for it, but that the brain can learn new concepts if it acquires language for them. So SW argues that language is inherently intertwined with human cognition, rather like how the parts of the brain are all interconnected and working together as we think. Strong SWism is pretty thoroughly debunked, weak is tentatively accepted on a spectrum. I think that they might be trying to refer to generative theory versus cognitive theory. Again, it's been a while, so I might be wrong, but: - Generative theory is Chomsky et al. who believe that there is a single inherent underlying pattern to language that restricts it, and that one could, in theory, figure out all possible syntaxes, for example. Similar to how phonology and phonetics are obviously constrained by our biological makeup (we can only make certain sounds), the argument is that other structures are as well. Basically that although they all seem different to us, languages are more alike than they are different because they come from a single source. Also Chomsky and co. consider this approach cognitive; the linguists are just infighting. - Cognitive Linguists believe that language, and the systems that produce it, are under evolutionary pressure and that they change and shift in response to the environment. Basically, if you took 10k people and dumped 5k of them on one planet and 5k on a planet that was the physical opposite, forbid them to contact anyone, and visited 2000 years later, Generativists say you could find a system in common between the two and cognitive linguists say you probably couldn't, because the systems themselves would have evolved to have different starting points. Chomsky + GG: Person is born, person hears speech, person reaches for inherent language patterns in brain and uses them to understand/learn. Cognitive: Person is born, person hears speech, person picks up on the system from the speech and is encouraged to do so/pattern match by social reinforcement. No linguist that I'm aware of would claim that language is just an I/O system.

tsimionescu 5y ago

The Sappir-Whorf hypothesis refers to specific languages, and is all but proven wrong in its strong form (a person speaking English and a person speaking Japanese seem to perform exactly the same at all cognitive tasks). But there is a different theory, due to Noam Chomsky I believe, that language in the general sense is in fact our mechanism for higher thought, with communication being just a secondary function[0]. I believe that this is the theory that the GP was combatting with the animal example. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEmpRtj34xg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEmpRtj34xg

thaumasiotes 5y ago
> The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis refers to specific languages, and is all but proven wrong in its strong form (a person speaking English and a person speaking Japanese seem to perform exactly the same at all cognitive tasks). Japanese people show extremely high performance at "spatial awareness" tasks compared to whites.[1] So on average this isn't true. But it's true that there does not appear to be any benefit from either language -- Japanese-speaking Japanese show no advantage over English-speaking Japanese. [1] On white-normed IQ tests, East Asians generally show a bit of underperformance (relative to European whites) on verbal tasks and gigantic overperformance on spatial tasks, which is traditionally averaged out to an average IQ score moderately above that of whites. Interestingly, Native Americans show the same slant -- much much stronger spatial than verbal performance -- but at a lower base level.
- xwolfi 5y ago
  And that is due to the language and not, say, the writing tradition ? If we kept the same languages and made japanese people write it massively in 26 half sound symbols and made all of what you call a white european population use 3k+ ideogram drawings for word starting at 3 years old, do you think we d see exactly the same performance ? I bet you the writing tradition is very influencial when it varies so much and has no relationship with language, especially in Japanese where they frankensteined Chinese symbols over centuries which must require an enormous mental gymnastics and redirect large processing power vs someone who can read and write everything he hears relatively simply?
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    > And that is due to the language and not, say, the writing tradition ? No, neither. > If we kept the same languages and made japanese people write it massively in 26 half sound symbols and made all of what you call a white european population use 3k+ ideogram drawings for word starting at 3 years old, do you think we d see exactly the same performance ? Yes, the influence of spoken and written language appears to be zero. I mentioned this.
mistermann 5y ago
> The Sappir-Whorf hypothesis refers to specific languages, and is all but proven wrong in its strong form (a person speaking English and a person speaking Japanese seem to perform exactly the same at all cognitive tasks). I believe it's a bit more complicated than this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referent > In fields such as semantics, semiotics, and the theory of reference, a distinction is made between a referent and a reference. Reference is a relationship in which a symbol or sign (a word, for example) signifies something; the referent is the thing signified. The referent may be an actual person or object, or may be something more abstract, such as a set of actions. > Reference and referents were considered at length in the 1923 book The Meaning of Meaning by the Cambridge scholars C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards. Ogden has pointed out that reference is a psychological process, and that referents themselves may be psychological – existing in the imagination of the referrer, and not necessarily in the real world. For further ideas related to this observation, see failure to refer. In this case, what has been ~"proven wrong" is Whorf's specific hypothesis (the reference) of the underlying phenomenon (the referent) that he was observing, whereas the general notion of whether language fundamentally/substantially affects cognition seems to remain unknown. As a thought experiment: imagine a culture where this psychological phenomenon of "referent" is a "first class" concept in a language, and the culture that uses it insists that the distinction must be at least taken into consideration whenever a disagreement arises between two or more people....after several decades under such a model, might substantial differences arise? Perhaps this isn't a "proper" example of Whorfism, but it seems to be in the neighbourhood.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  Well, I would say that in your thought experiment it's actually the culture that could produce a substantial difference in cognition, whereas the langauge is merely a consequence of that culture. For example, there are some Australian langauges if I remember correctly where instead of words for left, right, ahead, behind (relative positioning) they use words for something similar to north/south/east/west (absolute positioning) - as in, "give me that cup to your northeast". This of course requires a habit of keeping track of your absolute positioning at all times. However, you will not gain this ability or habit just by learning the langauge. In fact, your langauge can even express that same thing today. Instead, you will be unable to naturally use their langauge unless and until you get into the habit of keeping track of your absolute positioning. Similarly, the people growing up in this culture may not easily learn what we mean by left and right, but they would not gain the ability to understand these concepts merely by learning English - instead, they would naturally speak English while avoiding left/right references, or simply make more mistakes than someone growing in a culture where relative positioning is the preferred form of communication.

slibhb 5y ago

I interpret what you quoted as the opposite of Sapir-Whorf. Could you explain why they're the same?

Mezzie 5y ago
I am also quite confused. My understanding (it's been a while since I studied Linguistics) is that strong Sapir-Whorf refers to the argument that what actions your brain can take are constrained by your native language(s). So by strong Sapir-Whorf, the distinction between the French savoir and connaitre should make zero sense to me since that distinction isn't found in English. Weak Sapir-Whorf says the distinction wouldn't make sense until I learned words for it, but that the brain can learn new concepts if it acquires language for them. So SW argues that language is inherently intertwined with human cognition, rather like how the parts of the brain are all interconnected and working together as we think. Strong SWism is pretty thoroughly debunked, weak is tentatively accepted on a spectrum. I think that they might be trying to refer to generative theory versus cognitive theory. Again, it's been a while, so I might be wrong, but: - Generative theory is Chomsky et al. who believe that there is a single inherent underlying pattern to language that restricts it, and that one could, in theory, figure out all possible syntaxes, for example. Similar to how phonology and phonetics are obviously constrained by our biological makeup (we can only make certain sounds), the argument is that other structures are as well. Basically that although they all seem different to us, languages are more alike than they are different because they come from a single source. Also Chomsky and co. consider this approach cognitive; the linguists are just infighting. - Cognitive Linguists believe that language, and the systems that produce it, are under evolutionary pressure and that they change and shift in response to the environment. Basically, if you took 10k people and dumped 5k of them on one planet and 5k on a planet that was the physical opposite, forbid them to contact anyone, and visited 2000 years later, Generativists say you could find a system in common between the two and cognitive linguists say you probably couldn't, because the systems themselves would have evolved to have different starting points. Chomsky + GG: Person is born, person hears speech, person reaches for inherent language patterns in brain and uses them to understand/learn. Cognitive: Person is born, person hears speech, person picks up on the system from the speech and is encouraged to do so/pattern match by social reinforcement. No linguist that I'm aware of would claim that language is just an I/O system.