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From: minakami@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Michael K. Minakami)
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: <1990Aug22.044524.24980@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 22 Aug 90 04:45:24 GMT
References: <5137@munnari.oz.au> <1445@anaxagoras.ils.nwu.edu>
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Lines: 21

In article <1445@anaxagoras.ils.nwu.edu> pautler@ils.nwu.edu writes:
>	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.  


I think this is only the weak form of the Whorfian hypothesis. The strong
version does assert that the structure and lexicon of a language shapes 
thought. According to J. R. Anderson..."Whorf felt that such a rich variety
of terms would cause the speaker of the language to perceive the world
differently from a person who had only a single word for a particular
category." This stronger version of the hypothesis is generally considered
disproven by Rosch's studies of color vision and similar experiments.

--Michael
-- 
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The child can explain the man better than  | Michael K. Minakami     
      the man can explain the child.       | minakami@neon.stanford.edu