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Language and thought

Language and thought. LING 400 Winter 2010. Overview. Language and thought Summary of course Course evaluations. Please turn off your cell phone. Concepts. Every human language is ‘fully expressive’ translation possible exceptions might be pidgins, invented languages.

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Language and thought

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  1. Language and thought LING 400 Winter 2010

  2. Overview • Language and thought • Summary of course • Course evaluations Please turn off your cell phone.

  3. Concepts • Every human language is ‘fully expressive’ • translation possible • exceptions might be pidgins, invented languages

  4. How concepts expressed • Concept  morpheme • How many morphemes required to express a concept? • Languages vary • e.g. • English • 2 morphemes, ‘conifer branch’ • Witsuwit’en • 1 morpheme, [l]

  5. Morpheme  concept • What concept(s) expressed by a morpheme? • Witsuwit’en • [təstɬ’əs] ‘paper, book, envelope, letter’ • Kinship systems • Witsuwit’en • –[aq’əj] ‘maternal aunt’, -[pits] ‘paternal aunt’

  6. Does language affect thought? • Do speakers/signers of different languages view the world differently? • Yes: (Sapir-)Whorf hypothesis/linguistic relativity

  7. Linguistic relativity hypothesis • Franz Boas (1858-1942) • Race  culture  language • Edward Sapir (1884-1939) • “Language is a particular how of thought.” • Benjamin Whorf (1897-1941) • “users of markedly different grammars…must arrive at somewhat different views of the world”

  8. Sapir and Whorf not the only ones to wonder about this This stuff is not in my brain.  http://burgersmoke.wordpress.com/

  9. Testing Sapir-Whorf hypothesis • “The Whorf Hypothesis can be difficult to test, because it can be difficult to identify tasks that really are language- and culture-neutral.” • Pirahã tribe (Brazil) • the language lacks numbers • attempts to get Pirahã to count unsuccessful • because the language lacks numbers, or problems with teaching technique? • http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/1094492/DC1

  10. Color experiments • Infinite number of ways to carve up colors • Lenneberg and Roberts 1956 • English speakers and monolingual Zuni speakers presented with colors ranging between yellow and orange • (What was the task? to name the colors presented?) • “the English speakers, who have two basic color terms for this range (namely, yellow and orange), were highly consistent in naming the colors, where the Zuni, who have a single term encompassing yellow and orange, made no consistent choice.” • “These results seem to support the Whorf Hypothesis.” • English speakers could have said: “yellow”, “orange”, “yellow-orange”, “orange-yellow”, “mostly yellow with a touch of orange” etc. • Or simply show (1) preference to answer with monomorphemic words, (2) English speakers agree on meanings of “orange” and “yellow”?

  11. Another experiment • Which direction does the arrow on left point? • Turn 180°. • Which arrow points same direction as original arrow? • Results • English speakers • “consistently choose arrow B” • Tzeltal speakers • “consistently choose arrow A”

  12. Spatial relationships in English vs. Tzeltal • English • right, left, front, back are relative terms • the chair is to the left of the table • Tenejapan Tzeltal • “uses absolute terms similar to north, south, east and west instead” • “the chair is to the north of the table”

  13. Summary of Sapir-Whorf • Intriguing idea • Inconclusive experimental support

  14. Course summary • Possible future encounters with language or linguistics

  15. International Phonetic Alphabet • Dictionaries • French ‘eye’ • http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/

  16. Semantics • Re employee titles in business (‘manager’ vs. ‘director’): • “It’s just semantics,” says Ben Compton, president of 10-person architecture firm Architects BC (Lexington, SC). “We really don’t put much emphasis on it. What’s more important is what we can do to help bring (an employee’s) career along.” • Same referent (what matters most here), different sense

  17. AAVE • a.k.a. African-American Vernacular English

  18. Historical Linguistics • Dene-Yeniseic hypothesis • http://www.uaf.edu/anlc/dy.html • Ed Vajda, Western Washington U.

  19. Endangered languages • “Last Words: If all languages are equal, why does it matter when one of them dies?” • “Why is it a tragedy if Tlingit disappears? …it’s hard to see why it’s a bad thing if their language disappears. Why? Because the very thing that made it a mistake for the missionaries to try to stop people from speaking Native American languages (it’s not as if English was better) makes it a mistake to care whether people continue to speak Native American languages (it’s not as if English is worse).” • Why does it matter? Who does it matter to?

  20. ASL • ASL and L1 • 90%+ deaf children born to hearing parents • “signers are the only large population that undergoes delayed exposure to a primary language” (Meier 1991) • ASL an endangered language? • Cochlear implants an issue for the Deaf community

  21. Thanks to • All of you

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