From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sun Jul 27 2003 - 14:51:10 MDT
Paul Grant writes
> Giulio [writes]
> > I think it is a feedback loop, thought defines language and in turn
> > language constrains thought, at least when you think with words. I don't
> > think the effect is very strong when you compare similar languages. I
> > spoke only one language (Italian) as a child, so most of the times I
> > think in that language. I know some other languages (English Spanish and
> > French, all indo-european languages) well enough to think in them when I
> > am speaking them, and I do not notice any significant difference.
Well, that has to be our default assumption, (null hypothesis).
> > But I am sure that if I could speak Chinese well enough to
> > think in Chinese when speaking Chinese, I would notice significant
> > differences in my thought patterns. At least this is what fluent
> > speakers of two very different languages (e.g. a child whose two
> > mother languages are English and Chinese) say.
Well, perhaps you should talk to more people, in the light of:
Paul writes
> I think it's through an availability mechanism; I speak Arabic and
> English fluently, and certain thoughts or mechanisms are very difficult
> to "translate" semantically (ergo there exists no corresponding word or
> short phrase in the other language). In any event, I don't think that a
> language in and of itself necessarily limits thought development;
> however it can delay it.... Sufficiently intelligent people come up
> with new words all the time in their day-to-day dealings [that map to
> something significant missing from their current semantic set].....And
> eventually it filters down to the masses. Put another way, knowing
> several languages expands ur ability to capture a thought precisely {and
> thus is highly recommended}; knowing one language does not necessarily
> hinder that development of a thought, just delays it. And that goes for
> radically different languages (like English or Chinese), in that left to
> their own devices, the English and Chinese would eventually identify all
> the notions they want... The order in which a particular semantic
> notion is discovered however, would probably be vastly different in such
> extremes.
Sounds quite sensible. I especially appreciate your observation that
one language can *delay* the conclusions that one could or would come
to, without preventing them. Even that is quite a concession to the
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. While of course it can be harder to convey
in one language what is easy in another, it surely is about equally
difficult or easy to *think* certain thoughts. At least that's what
I am concluding from this discussion.
Lee
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