Re: Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (was: RE: Allowing the sweet voice of reason into our lives)

From: Mark Walker (tap@cgocable.net)
Date: Tue Aug 07 2001 - 11:23:54 MDT


> Damien Broderick wrote:
> > At 06:46 PM 8/6/01 -0700, Lee wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Are you familiar with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?
> >>
> >
> > It turned out to be (almost entirely) wrong.
> >
> > Look up Berlin and Kay, or Eleanor Rosch. This was established at least
two
> > decades ago.
> >
> > Damien Broderick
> >
> >
It sometimes helps to distinguish between various claims that are often run
together when discussing Whorf and friends:
1. Are all natural languages intertranslatable?
2. Are all natural languages learnable by all?
3. Are perception and language completely independent?
Whorf, I believe, answered no, yes, and no. People often run 1 and 2
together but these are quite separate issues. You can get an idea how to
separate 1 and 2 from the following quote from Whorf:

"That modern Chinese or Turkish scientists describe the world in the same
terms as Western scientists means, of course, only that they have taken over
bodily the entire Western system of rationalizations, not that they have
corroborated that system from their native posts of observation."

Whorf was probably his own worst enemy by the way he runs different ideas
together. But I think this is what he says. (My evidence, obviously, is more
than just this quote). Translation, strictly speaking, is a matter of
pairing words, phrases, or sentences between languages. If Whorf is correct
then we must presume that the project of translating Western science
semantically alters and expands the Chinese or Turkish languages, i.e.,
there is no way to translate Western science into an unaltered Chinese or
Turkish language. That is, these languages undergo semantic expansion as
they encounter modern European languages. This is of course not to say that
the Chinese or the Turks cannot learn western science, it is simply that
they must learn new semantic terms, not simply find synonyms in their own
language. The real trick, in my opinion, to understand 3 is to get clear
what one counts as the appropriate 'observation language'. I see a white
computer in front of me but someone who has no contact with modern
technology is not likely to use a similar description. If we looked for some
description that was neutral between us then it might be 'white thing'.
Rosch et al suggest that we share the same sorts of exemplars for 'white'
etc., the question is how this relates to the higher level categories that
characterize our higher level observation language. It is quite consistent
with Whorf, it seems to me, that the Eskimos and I share the same exemplar
for white but that I fail to observe their famous six types of snow. Mark.

With respect to



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