What’s in a Word?

As a physicist, when I was young, I studied linguistics, so that I could exprss my thoughs into words that other could understand. As a mathematical physicist, I know that there is much though beyond language, and aa a linguist, I can see how language might affect some thought. In fact, now, that I am in China for a few years and have learned some Chinese, I believe that Chinese thinking might be constrained by the grammatic structure of their language. In the romance languages, for example, there are many embedded subparts of a sentence, which, as a mathematician, I think of as parenthecal structure, as in math. Chinese, on the other hand, lacks that kind of structure. Also, the Chinese have to do a lot of memorization, as there are as many as 50,000 characters in the language. I find, as a university professor of finance and economics, in China, that most people have learned to memorize, not do complicated, embedded thinking.
Thus, while I believe that language might shape some thought and some types of thought processes, I believe that thought goes far beyond language.
C. L. Mattoli

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The article highlights exactly why I like Lojban (www.lojban.org), which was specifically designed to minimizes such mental restrictitons.

The article highlights exactly why I like Lojban (www.lojban.org), which was specifically designed to minimizes such mental restrictitons.

Why do Romance languages have two words for wall, indicating whether it is on the inside or the outside. Likewise, why do cats have only seven lives? Is English really a language of fewer obstacles and better luck?!

Why do Romance languages have two words for wall, indicating whether it is on the inside or the outside. Likewise, why do cats have only seven lives? Is English really a language of fewer obstacles and better luck?!

Helen Keller once noted that prior to developing language, she had no thoughts as such. Observing, conceptualizing and sorting ideas very much depend on words. Most certainly a reciprical feedback system develops. It is in many ways a moot question since all humans develop some system of language that is inseperable from cultural influence. Language is in a very real sense a means of talking to one's self as much as it is a communication system.

Boroditsky is of course not at all the first to bring empiricism to the study of linguistic relativity (see e.g. Lucy 1992a,b), nor are all the examples mentioned from her own work (the spatial stuff is more correctly attributed to Steve Levinson).

I regard Boroditsky's research as very naive, if your discussion is accurate. First how does the different response times of speakers of different languages in performing a task have anything to do with thought? Secondly, might it be that the difference in the dead reckoning ability of Kuuk Thaayorre speakers and English speakers in the orientation test have something to do with the difference in their accustomed environments and not their language? I would imagine that the English speakers in the test were city dwellers and not residents of the bush. Most city dwellers that I know, when asked directions, will give directions in terms of what streets to go on and where to turn left or right. Often city dwellers don't even know the compass directions.

I absolutely agree with the Turkish example. When I was learning the language, it was taught to me as the "gossip tense."

Is this a claim that language determines culture? I think this is reversing cause and effect. I believe that language reflects culture. A people at the mercy of their environment are more likely to see things in terms of compass directions. People who give locations in terms of themselves (right, left, etc.) probably put greatest weight on the individual or self, rather than the environment.

Would the view presented in this article suggest that if a culture that doesn't have high technology has no words for cell phone, wi-fi, etc. then the reason they don't have the technology is because they don't have the language to talk about it?

We've been a little slow without the metric system, too.

This article reminded me of a short story by Jorge Luis Borges entitled "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius." The story is partly about a world in which people do not believe in physical reality and how their language mirrors this belief. Their language has no nouns, so in turn, they perceive no things in the world.

Learning the way a certain foreign language works is an infallible window for anyone wanting to learn more about how that culture lives.

When you consider this perspective on the learning in young people, you begin to see that ELL and ESL students have huge barriers to overcome. Yet it's entirely possible. Look at Joseph Conrad. He surmounted several language barriers.

I know humor is one area that I'm lost. Navajo humor is not the same as white American humor. MY children who do not speak Navajo well think their mother is quite slow in that department.

Wonderful article, Sharon. This opens a field of perspection on perspective on linguistics!

Language may shape thoughts ? Any ordinary linguist does know that language does shpe thoughts.

Words are also woven into a fabric of meaning, not always the same for the weaver as for one who feels the fabric.

Words can be spun like a billiard ball making an arc on felt stretched tightly over slate, only to strike another ball which carries the spin to another place. When they are placed on paper the challenge is greatest to make them say all that needs to be said, being robbed of all the bodily expressions that can make a word dance gracefully into full meaning. Some of the best words are spoken at length between good friends who persist until all of the meaning is squeezed out of them and drunk with pleasure.