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.

Comments

psych 101

[Angry Black Man]

Language in this case has certainly limited their ability to express concepts. Their brains, however, will still recognize the existence of four or five things. Unfortunatly the limitations on their language will keep them from expressing verbally that knowledge. It could even bar their comprehensive abilities.

Personality depends on language, too

[DeadVulcan]

Many fluently multilingual people will tell you that they are a slightly different person when they speak a different language.

I'm fluent in English and Japanese, and I can attest to this. In fact, there have been occasions when I was out of touch from Japanese speakers for a long time, and I began to miss my "Japanese self" because it hadn't had a chance to surface for so long.

funny but missing the point

[SmallFurryCreature]

It doesn't matter what base you use. Your computer uses base 2 but can count far higher then 1 (the maximum value you can express with 1 digit in base 2.) The maximum value you can express with 1 digit in base 10 (the one most humans use) is of course 9. No one would suggest that most humans can therefore only count to 9.

If this tribe calculated 0, 1, 2, many, many 1, many 2 or something like it there would be no trouble. Just confusing for base 10 users.

But it seems this tribe doesn't have/need the concept of higher numbers.

What I would like to know if they understand the concept of zero. The invention of 0 is a usually considered a pretty big step in western culture and one arabs like to claim as their contribution to the world. If this tribe wich can only count to 2 understands 0 then it would make an intresting find.

They may not have a need to count higher numbers but me thinks it is very important to know the difference between 1 fish and 0 fish.

What may also be intresting is that if you need language to count and animals can count does that mean that all animals that can count have a language. And not just a language of "food" "danger" "sex" but a language with "1" "2" "3" etc?

Re:Where have I heard this before?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Interestingly enough, there is evidence that crows can count to 7. Test was done by having people enter a blind, then leave. Crow behaviour showed that with up to seven people involved, they knew when there was someone still in the blind. When eight+ people went in, and seven came out, they behaved as if the blind were empty.

Which makes them smarter than Hottentot tribesmen....

Re:superior language implies superiour thoughts?

[jjohnson]

Evidence against the Sappir-Worph hypothesis includes studies showing that people with color words for only dark colors and light colors couldn't reliably distinguish between dark red and dark blue. However, they could be *taught* the difference, and new color words, with no great difficulty, and could easily distinguish colors with those new words, showing that Sappir-Worph describes how language limits thought only circumstantially, not fundamentally. In other words, growing up with a lack of words for something doesn't mean one can't learn those words, concepts, and thoughts later on, so Sappir-Worph doesn't identify something fundamental about language use, only the rather obvious obvious conclusion that you can't put into words what you don't know the words for.

That's the problem with this psychologist's study--it doesn't say whether or not they learned larger numbers and applied them effectively.

Babel-17

[Wun Hung Lo]

Samuel Delaney's classic SF book "Babel-17" explored how language shapes behavior. A clandenstine group who wanted assassins who wouldn't question what they were doing created an artificial language and raised children in it. The language had no word for "I" or "no". It was all commands, such as "You will do this." They had no way of saying "No, I won't.", because the concept didn't exist in the language. I recently re-read it after many years and it's still an incredible read.

Re:Babel-17

[shane_rimmer]

One of the first words my two year old son picked up was no, but before that, he had ways of expressing his reluctance to do something: Cry, yell, flop on the floor, and other general temper tantrum stuff. Much has been written about the frustration children feel when they have no adequate words to express what they are feeling.

It seems to me, as a layman and parent of two children, that the thoughts and ideas occur anyway regardless of the ability to express them in a language that can convey meaning to others.

Now, to throw another sci-fi reference into the mix, I seem to recall that Caesar, the ape that lead the revolution in the Planet of the Apes mythology, got his start with a single word: No.

Re:Babel-17

[barawn]

Is a table male or female? It's an IT to me, and that's the way it will stay.

It's an "it" to the French, too. It's not that the table 'has' gender - it's that the word belongs to a certain class of words that behave like it - that is, they're preceded by "la", "une", etc. In French, it's not "table", it's "la table" - the article is linked to the word itself (much like in English the infinitive is two words, but one idea).

In truth, it has nothing to do with the object itself. The French don't know why it's "la table" and not "le table", other than to tell you that it doesn't sound right as "le table".

The problem really comes because teachers like to teach it as if it really is confusing, and massively different from English, so you have to start seeing the gender in things. That's crazy. It's not different. It's just something you have to memorize, just like they have to memorize which adjectives you use "more", "most" with, and not "-er", "-est".

In truth, you can see the obvious bias in the study, as well. If your society has no language for counting above "two", then it likely has no need for counting above two, and so when presented with a situation where they need to count above two, they will be confused, because it's something they haven't done before. After all, when you're taught numbers, you're taught to count! So is it linguistic? I doubt it. I think the reverse is more true - thought (and society) shapes language.

I'd have to find out more about the study, but it seems really weak. You'd need a very careful control - that is, someone who lived in the same society as the Piraha, but spoke a different language that contained numbers higher than 2, and even that would be touchy because, as I said before, learning numbers above 2 means you were taught to count. But anyway, obviously no one like that exists, and I find it ludicrous that the psychologist made the leap "language directs thought" rather than "society directs language".

Re: Sapir-Whorf

[Theatetus]

These people encounter Dutch people on occasion, but just refer to them, and all non-natives, as foreigners.

Oddly enough, that's pretty much how the word "Dutch" got into English: it's a corruption of "Deutsch" (one of the things Germans call themselves) -- the assumption at the time being all non-French continentals were the same people.

Back on topic, you can't take the "one -- two -- many" thing too far: almost every language shows at some stage of its development a "one two many" noun declension. Old English had specific dual endings; as did all the Germanic languages; dual was present in Proto Indo European and survived into most of the child languages.

Many semitic languages show vestiges of a 1 2 many number system (Arabic and Hebrew still retain a dual declension for some nouns). Swahili retains a separate noun class entirely for objects that come naturally in pairs (maono rather than *nyono, for instance).

I think all this points towards the fact that the distinction between one and two, and the distinction between two and many, is simply more important to people than the distinctions among various numbers greater than two, and that "one two many" is a natural linguistic response to the conditions of human life throughout most of human history -- people only develop more complex plural systems when agriculture and trade make it neccessary to develop them.