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From: rjohnson@vela.acs.oakland.edu (R o d Johnson)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,comp.cog-eng,sci.psychology,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Computer Languages and the Sapir/Whorf hypothesis
Keywords: computer languages, Sapir/Whorf hypothesis, linguistics
Message-ID: <2674@vela.acs.oakland.edu>
Date: 21 Aug 90 22:21:06 GMT
References: <5137@munnari.oz.au> <1445@anaxagoras.ils.nwu.edu>
Reply-To: rjohnson@vela.acs.oakland.edu (R o d Johnson)
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Organization: Knights of Vern Dudley Bohay-Nowell
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In article <1445@anaxagoras.ils.nwu.edu> pautler@ils.nwu.edu writes:
>In article <5137@munnari.oz.au>, jfl@munnari.oz.au (John Lenarcic) writes:
>> 
>> ( Briefly stated, the hypothesis is : 
>>          " Language shapes the way we think,
>
>	Okay.
>
>> 	   and determines what we can think about. " )

There are various versions of the idea around, which can be attributed
to von Humboldt, Sapir, Whorf, and their commentators.  The idea that
language "determines what we can think about" is a very strong version
of the hypothesis, probably stronger than Sapir would have liked,
maybe stronger than Whorf.  These things were not always stated with
perfect clarity and consistency, though, so it's difficult to say.

>	A professor in pragmatics told me this spring that the theory
>only claims that a given language forces its users to mentally keep
>track of certain information like time-of-occurence, etc. that is
>needed to make correct decisions about tense, etc. that are *required*
>to form sentences.  

This is a slightly odd-sounding version of Whorf's thesis.  It's hard
to say if it's a good rendering of Whorf into modern terms, but it
feels rather reductive to me.  At any rate, it's too narrow: Whorf was
concerned with Hopi versus English way of thinking about time in that
particular article, but the thesis in general isn't strictly limited
to that.  Hopi merely provided (or seemed to provide) a striking
illustration of two different ways of thinking.  Note that "ways of
thinking" is in fact rather sloppy here: Whorf didn't actually
investigate the ways Hopis think about time in any detail at all--he
merely projected his feeling about the language onto their thinking.
In essence, he *assumed* the truth of what later commentators saw as a
"hypothesis".  To Whorf, it was almost self-evident.

>I believe the comparison S/W used to illustrate
>this was the bookkeeping required by a Southwest Native American language
>(Hopi?) 

Yes.  Whorf, though, not Sapir/Whorf.  Whorf, though he had had some
training, was basically a gifted amateur; Sapir was less inclined to
make sweeping claims--he knew how language has a way of stabbing such
claims in the back.

>I believe the traditional
>example:
>
>(~11 Inuit language words for snow) and (~1 English word for snow)
> ==> (Inuit language and English users think about snow differently)
>
>might not be due to S/W and probably misrepresents their idea.  

Boas, in fact, in the Introduction to the "Handbook of American Indian
Languages" (1911).  (At least this is the point at which it was
introduced into linguistics.)  Geoff Pullum has recently done a fairly
comprehensive study of where this idea comes from and how it has
mutated into "50 words for snow", "*100* words for snow," etc.  We've
had some discussion of it in sci.lang as well.

>But
>I am not a linguist, nor have I read their work.  I just wanted to suggest
>that applications of S/W may not be what you actually want to look for.

I think that this is true. I, and I think many other linguists (though
not all), have a gut feeling that somewhere, somehow, deep down,
there's a kernel of truth in the idea, but no attempt to frame it as
an empirical hypothesis has, to my knowledge, really led anywhere.


-- 
Rod Johnson  *  rjohnson@vela.acs.oakland.edu  *  (313) 650 2315