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One, Two, Many - Language Shapes Thought
Chuck1318 writes "The Piraha tribe in the Amazon has only three words used in counting, that mean one, two, and many. A psychologist testing them has found that they are unable to accurately perform tasks involving quantities as few as four or five. He says that this shows that, at least for numbers, language shapes and limits how people can think." I can't help but be reminded of the gully dwarves from Dragonlance when reading this.
So, let me get this straight. These people have no concept of numbers, and upon testing them for mathematical skills, you found them lacking?
Why does that not surprise me.
It's not so much that language shapes thought, it's entirely the other way around. If you and your tribe have never discovered mathematics, it's only natural that you have no words to express them. These people are making it sound like if we recite a list of number names we will become genius mathematicians.
Obviously, this should be self-evident. Sadly, it seems this is not the case.
Language is the uniting factor in society because it is the basis for complex thought (just try to plan out your day while thinking abstractly); different languages, and dialects, have different grammatical structures that lead thought patterns to be constructed in different ways. Even for me, with German as a second language, I still notice that when i am in Germany (currently i Berlin), and think in German I compose thoughts and analyze my environment differently.
:)
I can only imagine that one in a completely different society would have a very different thought pattern. The common roots of Western languages indicates a similarity in thought, and people who learn foreign languages are far more adept at understanding and integrating with that society.
Similarily, in computer languages different grammatical structures lead different programmers to analyze and solve problems differently: i.e. functional vs imperative. Add the context-sensitive nature of human languages, and this becomes substantially more complex.
Ok, thats longer than my normal post, but this is a really interesting topic
I'm surprised nobody's made the "reduced language = reduced ability to form mental concepts" link with Orwell's '1984'. This seems like some strong evidence that it might actually work.
=Smidge=
Which also brings up another good point; inventing. According the the European world, Christopher Columbus discovered North America in 1492. Discovered by the Europeans, that is. I find it very hard to discover land with human inhabitants. More than one group of people could have figured out the concept of zero, or discovered North America, or invented the telephone (Elisha Gray v. Alexander Graham Bell).
l ishaGray.html
All depends on your point of view. http://www.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/OYTT-images/E
I'm not a psychologist, but to me there's nothing earth-shattering here. There are other instances of people who have words for a wide variety of shades of green (that normal Americans can't differentiate) but who use the same word for the colors we call orange and red.
But, even knowing that, is anything so dramatic going on? "Western" people with the proper training and experience could tell the difference at a glance between a screen full of C programming and a screen full of FORTRAN. My grandmother would struggle with that task. It would just all look like gibberish to her. Likewise, someone experienced in wine tasting can describe in detail the differences between two wines most of the rest us couldn't even tell apart.
A lot of what's necessary (or at least very helpful) in learning about programming or wines is the specialized language. When I'm told that the difference between two wines is that one is "fruitier" than the other, I've got something to look for. The nebulous and complex experience of tasting wine is brought into my understanding a little because I can now use a word to identify a part of what I'm sensing.
My point is, the idea that language affects how we think and what we perceive is not really all that novel.
Seems like no-one takes the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis serious these days, but I always thought it makes sense.
Why? It seems to me that all manner of spontaneous word creation (and outright theft from other languages) is hobbled if it were true. I mean, if thoughts of 0 or 3+ things were important to these people, they would have that thought long before they came up with a clean word to express it. As another poster joked, a computer isn't hobbled by only having 0 and 1 at its disposal. I think it is more correct to say that these people are not Turing-complete (for whatever reason) rather than blaming the language.
One of my favourite examples, as a Norwegian stranded in the UK, a country where people simply does not get the concept of candy with ammonium chloride, is how to talk about it.
In the UK, the word "candy" has mostly gone out of use, and usually refers to brown sugar or alt least "old fashioned" sweets based on brown sugar. Instead you'd refer to the different types of confectionary directly, with most of the sugar based confectionary grouped under "sweets".
Now, ammonium chloride based candy is most definitively not sweets. Though it is always fun to trick Brits into chewing Turkish Pepper or some other Scandinavian ammoium chloride based candy... :)
The word "confectionary" similarly doesn't really cut it - it's recognised as a grouping, and if you asked people if thy wanted any confectionary they'd wonder what kind you were talking about.
Scandinavian languages on the other hands have words for this, since it's an integral part of our culture. In Norwegian you'd talk about "godt" or "smaagodt", referring to small sweets, bits of licorice, small chocolate pieces or candy full of ammonium chloride, as well as assorted sour stuff.
But what would a usable equivalent be in the UK? I usually end up resorting to candy, but Brits then tend to assume that since I'm foreign I'm probably resorting to US English, and talking about sweets...
That seems obvious. But then again humanity survived quite a long time without the 0 and when the Arabs finally invented it and later brought it to Europe, it for quite some time was heavily objected against in certain circles as being something devilish and all that.
There is a major mental difference between "I have no fish" and "I have a number of fish, but it just so happens that this number is 0." That is through even without speaking of performing arithmetic in base X and understanding the special role of that 0 thing in that context.
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I don't understand why they're jumping to the conclusion that language shapes ability. The more reasonable conclusion seems to be that need shapes ability, with language as an afterthought.
It seems reasonable that someone who has never needed to count beyond 2 is unable to do so. It also wouldn't suprise me if that same person didn't have a word for 3 or 4 or any way to express any number beyond 2.
Why would we assume from this that the language develops before the ability? Why couldn't it be the case that someone discovered a value 1 more than 2, and named it "three" or "tres", or even "George". Prior to giving it a name, the person would be aware that the value existed.
If you tried to teach the person that a value 1 more than 2 existed, you could say "three" all you wanted, and it wouldn't make a difference. Before they could map "three" to "a value 1 more than 2", they would need to have some understanding of what "a value 1 more than 2" is.
The "strong" form of Sapir-Whorf, that the form of language directly impacts what kinds of thought are possible, is not taken too seriously anymore. But there are weaker forms of the hypothesis, that there is an infulence, that still seem reasonable given the evidence so far. Much like how a different programming language lends itself to different sorts of programming constructs.
One of the first words my two year old son picked up was no
That makes sense. Most children probably hear that word more frequently than any other word, so they pick it up quicker.
Child about to stick fork into light socket. Parent yells "no".
Child about to feed oatmeal to VCR. Parent tells them "no".
Child wants another piece of candy. Parent tells them "no" or maybe "yes", but commonly "no".
Child punches dog in the face. Parent tells the child "no", and maybe dog bites.
Any number of other scenarios in which the child is about to do something dangerous, stupid, or irritating. Parent tells them "no".
Thanks to the internet, we can now all die alone together! -SomeWoman
Language follows culture, not vica-versa. When electronic mail arrived, we didn't run around flumoxed because there was no word for it. We invented a word. For a while, people were pretty bad with email, even though there was a word for it, because it's a difficult thing to understand. Then, after a few years, everybody "got" it.
I assume this is the same thing. Nomadic tribes don't deal with a lot of things, because everything they have they have to carry. So there's no need to count above two. If suddenly you ask a guy to keep track of four things, he's gonna have trouble: not because he doesn't have a word for it, but because he's going to have difficulty differentiating between the four things. It's no different than if I moved from driving a car to driving a semi trailer with no training. I'd get some of it, but important, non-intuitive concepts would be lost on me, and I'd probably crash. It's not because I don't have a word for them.
This is like the Inuit people and their umpteen words for snow. We outsiders can recognize the different types of snow with only a little practice, but since we don't get snow 8 months of the year, there's no need for it. English speakers understand foreign concepts like "esprit d'escalier" (the french term for all the cool things you wish you would have said when you leave somebody's house) or "bokeh" (the japanese term for the photographic effect that occurs with large aperatures in which the foreground is in sharp focus and the background is out of focus and fuzzy, thus drawing the eye towards the focus), even if we don't know what to call them.
It's experience that drives language, not vica versa -- althought the part of the brain that employees language is also responsible for the most critical human activity: symbolic logic.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
"...an artificial language and raised children in it. The language had no word for 'I' or 'no'."
As I recall from my undergrad days, such a language actually exists. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it is the language of a Native American group (Hopi?). Obviously the people speaking this language have ways of expressing negatives, for example by simply making a contrary statement that expresses their wishes. "Should we go to the store?" instead of "No, we shouldn't." reply "We should go to the movies."
Nevertheless this theory has been disproven to my satisfaction. It's based on extremely shaky ground. For example, there are plenty of languages that lack conditionals - these people are certainly capable of understanding and expressing things that "may" happen. Some languages have 5+ "genders" for nouns - does that mean that English speakers can't wrap their minds around such an idea? It's pretty naive in my opinion to assume that because no direct translation exists for a concept or grammatical structure, that a group of humans with identical mental machinery are unable to express such concepts in some way. I am absolutely positive that given the motivation, the Piraha tribespeople could learn our number system. The fact that their language has no such words only demonstrates the lack of necessity for such concepts in their daily life.
That's your two year old-- who has already been immersed in your language, with those concepts, for two years.
My 11 month old can understand a lot of words and commands, though she doesn't speak yet.
I have a two and a half year old who can tell you what she wants, and can understand nearly anything you might tell her. She can even express some abstract ideas "That's amazing", "This is fun".
It seems to me as a layman, that the only thoughts that occur naturally to children are "Feed me" and "make me comfortable again" (change diaper, make me warm, stop the thing that's hurting me). Everything else seems to be environmentally induced (most of the play I see in the 2.5 year old is mimicry of adult actions).
But evenso, I find it hard to grasp the concept of a language that goes to anything less than five-- because that's how many fingers you have and it seems to me that someone would want to count them sometime.
Also, personally, if I see a group of things, and it is five or less, I just know how many it is-- I don't have to consciously count them. Six though, I have to count. I do that by making two groups of three, so it's nearly instantaneous, but it is definitely not just "known".
On the other hand-- you only have two hands, so you'll rarely if ever manipulate more than two things at a time, so maybe that's it-- one, two, too many to do things with right now.
But for people who gather fruit and nuts... it seems like it would be a survival necessity to be able to tell the differnce between 4 cashews (I'm going to need to eat more) and 400 (I'm going to be so full).
And I think they can tell the difference. It seems, based on the article, that they just approximate volume. Because there is no need to tell the difference between 350 cashews and 400-- both of them will give a few people a snack. Similarly, who cares whether you have five avacodoes or six? That's a lot of avacadoes to eat.
No, I really do understand it. I just can't explain what it means. :)
In all seriousness, I would disagree in some cases (perhaps these are only exceptions...) where someone can conceive what is happening but either is not good enough at communicating, or is a horrid teacher, and so can not articulate.
I [think I] know this because I had a number of professors that suffered from this very affliction.
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First, I am dubious as to the accuracy of the study involved. The article states that "The Pirahã also failed to remember whether a box they had been shown seconds ago had four or five fish drawn on the top." The article does not, however, state how long the box had been displayed, whether or not the Pirahã had been told that the fish were significant before the box was removed, and whether or not it had been properly conveyed to the Pirahã that different quantities of fish in numbers greater than three were significantly distinct.
.org domain, I will select Americans for my sample study. The Pirahã may then show an American a box containing a fish and ask what species it is. I personally know little about species distinction in fish, especially those in Brazil, and would fail to answer the question correctly. The point is that it has never been necessary for me to have this information to function in my society. Would it be academic of the Pirahã, then, to assume I was less intelligent for not being able to recognize an Epen Nomin?
/-xáagahá/. If I were to answer the correct species of fish and fail to use that suffix, would it be correct for them to assume I was not confident of my answer?
;)
To contrast, let us imagine that the Pirahã are conducting a similar study on a member of another culture. As this site is of the
Additionally, the Pirahã have a phrase in their language which indicates a degree of certainty, usually applied at the end of a sentence:
My point here should be fairly obvious. We cannot assume that we know the critical details of the study based upon a web article which, between two columns of advertisements, still only takes two pages (on my monitor, at least).
Second, and more breifly, the assumption that counting capacity defines intelligence is inherently flawed. The Pirahã have no need for counting; this is not to say they are not capable of it. Most Americans don't need to know what a coral snake looks like or that touching the little yellow-and-black frog is a bad thing. This doesn't mean they couldn't learn.
In summary, while the study definitely presents an interesting idea, one must evaluate it critically before accepting it as fact. Mistakes can be made.
That was a lot more than I meant to type. Thanks for the time.
I think there is definitely some validity to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, but it's more subtle than is characterized in this article and in previous posts. Here's an example:
As a native speaker of American English I perceive a distinction between a pidgeon and a dove. I have a word each, after all. I would eat a dove. I would not eat a pidgeon.
To the best of my knowledge, German makes no such distinction. There is one word for both: Taube*. The Germans that I have spoken to about this perceive pidgeons and doves as being the same bird. When I think about it, the two birds do seem rather similar, but prior to these discussions I saw no real similarity. That is significant. I am perfectly capable of seeing pidgeons and dove as distinct or the same. I don't think language binds your thinkingit merely influences it.
* I have heard someone call a dove a "Friedenstaube" or "peace pidgeon/dove," but that was under weird circumstances.
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"This is one of those areas of study where a layman can have no idea of the absurd depth of literature available, or the sorts of ridiculous theories spawned, and yet still be able to say meaningful things because it's all pretty much been wanking."
Sorry, but that's just not the case. This happens to be my field - language is far more complicated than you might imagine. Linguistics, psycholinguistics, and visual cognition are not trivial just because you don't understand them on a serious level.
G
Whenever someone says, "I understand it, I just can't articulate it," what they really mean is, "I don't understand it."
My life changed when my fifth grade teacher said the same words to me ~mmm mmm~ years ago. I immediately understood the basic truth of that statement and have never wavered in my belief of it.
More directly topical, I have studied three non-western languages (heavily influenced by Sanskrit, Bali, and/or Chinese) and find the mindsets of native speakers to be so shaped by their language that I have to immerse myself in the culture to understand anything more than the simplest conversations. American culture and non-western ones find little common ground unless the latter have been influenced by foreign media.
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If your claim is that language has no influence on the thought of its speakers, I disagree. I think the influence is subtle, but it's there. Language and culture have an influence on each other.
I'll bet you're right that Germans don't care which is which. The distinction is culturally unimportant. The culture influenced the language. However, since there is no distinction in the language spoken by the general non-bird-watching German public, they are less inclined to perceive a distinction than a speaker of a language that makes such a distinction. This is the influence of the language on the culture.
Do you not see this as being a two-way street? I imagine that influence of culture on language is greater than the other way around, but the influence is still there.
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I find this really interesting, but is it that they can't tell the difference, or they don't care? I mean, there's the whole thing about Eskimos having 5 million words (I'm exaggerating 'cause I don't remember the real number) to describe snow. The rest of us who grew up in snowy climates, we could tell you that there are different kinds of snow, fluffier and less fluffy. The fact that I don't have good words to explain doesn't mean I don't perceive the difference. It's just that, when it's snowing, I don't necessarily care what kind of snow it is, and so to me, it's just snow.
I mean, the fact that the words exist mean someone was thinking about things that they had no good words for, and they invented the words. It seems to me very likely that the proper conclusion is that the life you live shapes both human thought and speech. If the tribe lead lives that needed a number "3", I'd guess they'd come up with it themselves, no problem.
Amen.
As a behavioral scientist (read: psychology), I have to absolutely disagree that "it's all pretty much been wanking". What a sorry attitude.
I do agree that many lay persons are capable of contributing meaningful insight to some of these problems, but in my own area of specialty, I encounter a lot of situations where people really have no clue what I am talking about, but think that they do. (FWIW, I am a grad student doing my thesis on Hedonic Prediction (in particular), and Motivation/Judgment-Decision Making in particular: I find that it takes at least 15 minutes to explain what these are really about to most people, and why they are related to industrial psychology).
As far as linguistics are concerned, having lived in a foreign country and REALLY learned the language, I know that language is a very deep area of research.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
I know some guys who really know how to weld with ocy-acetelyne. I mean REALLY know. Their weldments make me drool.
But they can't tell me how to do it. They can tell me what I did wrong (You used to much heat there), but they can tell me what it is that lets them know that (You just learn it).
Language is how we convey and obtaing information and instructions. If Joe can't tell you how to weld or why a weldment is bad, does that mean that he doesn't really know how or understand the process (which it would seem like at first), or does it just mean that the bridge to convey his knowledge and understanding is broken?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba