The problem with the strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is that it requires that all thought be restricted to language
I admittedly am interested but ignorant on this whole topic, but why does this follow? I am thinking on a much too high level here, and maybe there is some unavoidable issue in brain and/or language structures, , but why wouldn't my language influence me, even though not everything is language? I'm sure the music that is played in different parts of the world has an influence on the brain's perceptions too. Dunno, seems so obvious:)
we do not think entirely in pure language. Some of our thoughts are non-linguistic.
Sure, totally agreed. Is this also disputed? A strange world linguists seem to live in;) Dunno, seems entirely obvious from simple introspection, and. Many meditation techniques try to get a handle on the neverending stream of voices and make it stop, and if someone had doubts, he simply could practice one or two. Btw, I seem to plug this book a lot, but it's worth it: Zen and the Brain. A hard but fascinating read. Being no neurologist, much of the hard science part went over my head, but it's not that bad. Oh, thanks for the train of thought, Zen-Brain Reflections, the sequel will be out shortly:)
while sometimes we may fail at being able to express a notion that we're thinking, it doesn't mean that we're incapable of thinking it
On its own that isn't proven that our language doesn't prevent some thoughts from being thought.
All linguists agree that some effect of language is on how we think, and some effect of how we think is in our language, but the real sticking point is just how much?
That sentence and the whole last paragraph I can agree with.
when refering to objects in space, that doesn't mean you actually have to know your current or past orientation. For it to work, all that has to happen is that the listener and the speaker agree.
Agreed, but only with the logic.
I just don't think that the languages we are talking about do that. At least, if the cardinal corrections that they use do not refer to the correct directions, they do so in a stable and predictable manner, not ad-hoc per location. I haven't purchased the article yet, but I'm sure that they are really absolute. At least bsolute on a scale suited for wandering the vast open spaces of Australia. Angelatlarge's descriptions also clearly suggested that for me.
The same goes for Tenejapa Tzeltal, spoken by people in the Andes and mentioned somewhere in our thread. People have suggested it might have a coordinate system based on elevation (uphill side/downhill side). Again, close relation to the environment and a precise way of communicating what really counts in the given environment. And no doubt about absoluteness:)
I have never seen that and surely never done. The other person in our subthread who actually knwos what he/she's talking about (angelatlarge) pointed out that cardinal-language users would do so at night, inside etc, and that there is debate whether there are cardinal-only languages. It seems that in most cases there is just a dominance of one version(absolute or relative) over the other.
What does this have to do with linguistic determinism?
Not sure, but read my question to angelatlarge and his answer. Basically, if a language had only cardinal expressions, and you could show that its users can not think/imagine/experience in relative terms, this would be a very strong point for determinism, no?
No more than typesetters having a name for every different font
Ah, see! I agree completely, but what I'm interested in is kinda how the font names would influence the typesetter's perception of the world, if the font names actually were a quite complete way to express and discuss the world, comparable to language. I.e., if the anology wouldn't suck:)
I mean, our language gives as good a tool to describe and discuss the world (inner and outer) as we need and/or manage (and much more: we play with it, etc.). I don't see how it is such a stretch that this tool's peculiarities influence how we experience the world. Why would my ingrainedness with the rather rigid German system of tenses not let me think about time different from someone who uses languages with completely different systems to express time? (Or none at all... wouldn't surprise me in the world of language where most things seem to have been tried)
If the only (main) devices for describing spatial locations your language has are cardinal, then you can't say things like "grab the apple to the left of the coke bottle, not the one on the right"
I discussed that with another guy the other day here at/. and we didn't come to a conclusion. What if you ask the absolute direction-language guy, "With which hand do you throw a spear?"?*
Using absolute orientation does not make any sense - it doesn't change. What would he say?
And btw, many thanks for the link. I had read about research into this years ago in a newspaper, but this is the first time I found some real info. This article I read also mentioned languages whose coordinate system depended on elevation. Their users - according to the article south american indians in the Andes - would describe their orientation as upwards, downwards, etc. Got any info on that? Would be much appreciated.
* That's what we came up with, sorry for any racist slur
Um, if you read the very next sentence of my post, you'd see
Now, that might be a subjective feeling that not necessarily goes away if one does not have her "problem". I only speak German (first language) and English, and I surely don't feel completely competent in German, nor can I express myself "completely". One might even argue that if this was even possible, we would not have such a big body of adventurous poetry and prose in mature languages that over course of centuries tried ever new ways to express oneself "completely".
He reported that, after living in the U.S. for a few years, he now thinks in English most of the time... and even dreams in English about half of the time
Originally my loud thoughts were in English only when I thought about computer stuff, but it spreads. I'm living in Germany, but interact maybe 50% in English.
So if they tell an account of their near car-accident the other way, they will indicate the actual compass direction the other guy came from?
Say, yesterday they headed south in their car, and the other guy came came from western direction. In your conversation today they stand facing north. Will they actually point to the left to indicate the direction their opponent came from?
I don't disagree with you at all and I don't know why 2 guys read the "magicall properties" thing into my post. I would have thought I managed to make clear that that's not what I meant. Oh well.
Experience begets language
It's just that I believe that language also feeds back into experience. People with a clue tell me I'm wrong, but I'm stubborn.
Most non-linguists are pretty convinced of the same. After enough education to get over common sense, most linguists change their mind
Aren't you exaggerating there?
This is no more relavent nor special than saying the same thing about English speaking children in snowy areas. The construction of these complex words for snow is not all together that different from English composition of sentences.
Right, but off my point. Which was, I think, that people who have to deal with something all the time will develop both a language to discuss the nuances of the subject matter and a perception that allows to notice them. Yes it's obvious, but how the 2 interact is still interesting stuff.
If that's so, isn't that just like saying "on its east side" instead of "on starboard"
If I may jump in... It's not "just like saying". It's thinking in absolute coordinates (and perceiving yourself to be relative to an absolute coordinate system). But have you ever seen a native English speaker adjusting his position in present space to indicate the correct absolute direction of a past event? I don't think I have
I've heard stories that Turkish children growing up in Germany who end up speaking and hearing a mishmash of the two languages end up being fluent in neither
Sadly often true
and could be said to have no native language of their own.
Interestingly, the article does not debunk the basic idea of the story, only the representation. While the article says these languages do not really have more roots for "snow" than english, it also says that given the complex suffix structure, you can build unlimited versions of the same root - for all roots, not just snow-related. And not only nouns.
What it doesn't say is how many of these versions were in use when the Eskimos lived traditional lives in great numbers, but I suspect a lot. More than versions for sand-related stuff at least:)
IANAL (Linguist), but I'm pretty convinced that language does inform your thinking and perception. The Eskimo kid would learn early-on that snow has different forms, and that life depended on knowing how to behave in their vicinity. The fact that those types of snow probably were adressed by a multitude of recursive suffixes to a root noun can only have some effect on a learning brain. Why should a brain under these conditions develop the same patterns as the brain of a kid that lives with guys that call everything "the white stuff"?
I remember having read about a study that found that community of people from a certain area in Africa, who had a long-standing history of cattle breeding and trading, had a whole lot of (92?) "words" for brown. Quoted because I'm sure that was another misrepresentation. African languages are, like those of the Eskimo-group, quite often are more complicated than the average journalist imagines. Anyway, these people were reported to also be able to dinstinguish far many more differences of brown shades than Europeans in non-verbal tests (IIRC - might also be that the control group was non-cattle farming people in the same area.) I don't know if they tested for other colors too (green comes to mind).
Of course, if you see stuff, you might develop the wish to express it and make up words for it, just as you start to look out for stuff when you learn that there are words for it. As always *sigh* it's probably a complex interdependence, with neither language directing perception nor the other way round, but both developing together.
Maybe another data point that helps. Someone I know is the daughter of an EU diplomat who has followed his frequent relocations. Being a diplomat's daughter, the schools she went to were good. She speaks German, English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Russian roughly equally well, i.e. fluently.
She says that she feels to have no first language in which whe is completely competent and "home", and that this sucks. She feels that there is no one language in which she can express herself completely. Now, that might be a subjective feeling that not necessarily goes away if one does not have her "problem". I only speak German (first language) and English, and I surely don't feel completely competent in German, nor can I express myself "completely". One might even argue that if this was even possible, we would not have such a big body of adventurous poetry and prose in mature languages that over course of centuries tried ever new ways to express oneself "completely". That said, I think I can see her point.
Questioned on the language she thinks in, she says that it depends on the language in which she first encountered a given topic or spent a lot of time to think about it. So, she thinks about relationship/"love" stuff in Spanish because she spent her first puberty years in Spain. And she thinks about professional problems in French because she studied mostly in France.
The news is that so far Sony did not have a unified online service in the manner of Xbox Live. Individual games were expected to provide their own services.
Yeah, I should have qualified that more, and specified that I mean big projects. With small ones, all bets are off in this regard, closed or open source. From what I see, I still believe that what said holds true, and closed projects are more likely to grow into a mess, e.g. when certain functionality is needed and the deadline is close. Open developers are not smarter, it's just that the way of work IMHO encourages modularization more. A shining case in point would be StarOffice when it was opened, I think that's rather typical for many big closed projects.
Ok, I'll save you some grief: the controller isn't one-handed at all. The one-handed base unit has the motion sensors (others are attached to the tv) and a few buttons, that's right. But you can attach an analog stick to the base unit, which you hold with the other hand. Aim right hand/arm, movement left thumb. Nintenod has said they haven't shown all they have, so I expect additional extensions. See the TGS 2005 teaser video
You are right, that was a dreadful peace of writing. I'll try again, I think first time I was confused by the amount of things you got wrong in only 3 lines.
There were 2 intermingled problems with your reasoning. First, you said "I dont see how can you beleive it when Mitnick says it and how you can refute it when Allchin says the same thing", which you constructed as a contradiction*. However there is no need to even consider the content of the statements to see that there is no contradiction, because individual people on/. with individual viewpoints and opinions can have made them. You now say that you were talking about both statements being made by one poster, but that was not obvious from your post - why didn't you directly address those users?
But even the content of the 2 statements can perfectly be argued consistently. Thus, they aren't even contradictory if expressed by a/. hive mind (or one person, in your new interpretation). They only appear contradictory because you leave out the supporting arguments for both positions, leaving only the headlines.
Re:Doublespeak ?
on
Mitnick on OSS
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
You can't believe it because you (1) are making up an argument for the aim to refute it, commonly called a strawman, and (2) treat a collection of people as an individual. (Is there a fallacy name for this too?)
ad (1) Mitnick did not say "it's easier to hack" (I assume TFA/you mean "crack" here) which would mean that it's easier to get unauthorized access.
In fact TFA quoted Mitnick as saying that finding vulnerabilities in OSS code is easier, since it's easier to analyze for holes. This is true for both black-hats and white-hats, so it gets evened out somewhat. On the other hand, finding holes in closed source is harder for black-hats, but fixing them is impossible for white-hats, so overall this might put black-hats at an advantage.
And you leave out that OSS is not just "GPL the source and put it on a server". Mature OSS projects generally are modularized well, because parallel development is greatly hampered otherwise. Closed projects tend to be much dirtier in this respect. Incidentially, this separation also helps secure coding.
ad (2) It should not be a surprise that among > 1,000,000/. users, you find both people who say "duh" in the one, and others who say "Stop Fudding" in the other story.
Actually, what happens is this: Some people say "duh", because, well, duh, but you leave out the supporting argument that while Mitnick's assertion is obviously true, TFA left out the fact that it is easier to fix also. Other people say "FUD", because they forget that Allchin is somewhat right: putting Windows in the open now, necessarily with insufficient preparation and code cleanup, would make it more insecure. But that does not mean that it couldn't be more secure had it been constructed in the open from the beginning.
And I can't believe there are idiots who modded you +5 Insightful.
So they are giving him an award for breaking the terms of a licence agreement? (...) a group that was paying Tridge had licenced the software
Tridgell never entered into a license agreement with BitMover, and whether license agreements entered by other ODSL employees extended automatically to Tridge is pretty questionable.
if you don't like the licence you use something else.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with the strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is that it requires that all thought be restricted to language
:)
;) Dunno, seems entirely obvious from simple introspection, and. Many meditation techniques try to get a handle on the neverending stream of voices and make it stop, and if someone had doubts, he simply could practice one or two. :)
I admittedly am interested but ignorant on this whole topic, but why does this follow? I am thinking on a much too high level here, and maybe there is some unavoidable issue in brain and/or language structures, , but why wouldn't my language influence me, even though not everything is language? I'm sure the music that is played in different parts of the world has an influence on the brain's perceptions too. Dunno, seems so obvious
we do not think entirely in pure language. Some of our thoughts are non-linguistic.
Sure, totally agreed. Is this also disputed? A strange world linguists seem to live in
Btw, I seem to plug this book a lot, but it's worth it: Zen and the Brain. A hard but fascinating read. Being no neurologist, much of the hard science part went over my head, but it's not that bad. Oh, thanks for the train of thought, Zen-Brain Reflections, the sequel will be out shortly
while sometimes we may fail at being able to express a notion that we're thinking, it doesn't mean that we're incapable of thinking it
On its own that isn't proven that our language doesn't prevent some thoughts from being thought.
All linguists agree that some effect of language is on how we think, and some effect of how we think is in our language, but the real sticking point is just how much?
That sentence and the whole last paragraph I can agree with.
when refering to objects in space, that doesn't mean you actually have to know your current or past orientation. For it to work, all that has to happen is that the listener and the speaker agree.
:)
Agreed, but only with the logic.
I just don't think that the languages we are talking about do that. At least, if the cardinal corrections that they use do not refer to the correct directions, they do so in a stable and predictable manner, not ad-hoc per location. I haven't purchased the article yet, but I'm sure that they are really absolute. At least bsolute on a scale suited for wandering the vast open spaces of Australia. Angelatlarge's descriptions also clearly suggested that for me.
The same goes for Tenejapa Tzeltal, spoken by people in the Andes and mentioned somewhere in our thread. People have suggested it might have a coordinate system based on elevation (uphill side/downhill side). Again, close relation to the environment and a precise way of communicating what really counts in the given environment. And no doubt about absoluteness
They might. I've seen it. I do it myself.
I have never seen that and surely never done. The other person in our subthread who actually knwos what he/she's talking about (angelatlarge) pointed out that cardinal-language users would do so at night, inside etc, and that there is debate whether there are cardinal-only languages. It seems that in most cases there is just a dominance of one version(absolute or relative) over the other.
What does this have to do with linguistic determinism?
Not sure, but read my question to angelatlarge and his answer.
Basically, if a language had only cardinal expressions, and you could show that its users can not think/imagine/experience in relative terms, this would be a very strong point for determinism, no?
And wow, you've written more in this one story than in 6 years before :O
Thank you.
No more than typesetters having a name for every different font
:)
... wouldn't surprise me in the world of language where most things seem to have been tried)
Ah, see! I agree completely, but what I'm interested in is kinda how the font names would influence the typesetter's perception of the world, if the font names actually were a quite complete way to express and discuss the world, comparable to language. I.e., if the anology wouldn't suck
I mean, our language gives as good a tool to describe and discuss the world (inner and outer) as we need and/or manage (and much more: we play with it, etc.).
I don't see how it is such a stretch that this tool's peculiarities influence how we experience the world. Why would my ingrainedness with the rather rigid German system of tenses not let me think about time different from someone who uses languages with completely different systems to express time? (Or none at all
If the only (main) devices for describing spatial locations your language has are cardinal, then you can't say things like "grab the apple to the left of the coke bottle, not the one on the right"
/. and we didn't come to a conclusion. What if you ask the absolute direction-language guy, "With which hand do you throw a spear?"?*
I discussed that with another guy the other day here at
Using absolute orientation does not make any sense - it doesn't change. What would he say?
And btw, many thanks for the link. I had read about research into this years ago in a newspaper, but this is the first time I found some real info. This article I read also mentioned languages whose coordinate system depended on elevation. Their users - according to the article south american indians in the Andes - would describe their orientation as upwards, downwards, etc. Got any info on that? Would be much appreciated.
* That's what we came up with, sorry for any racist slur
And I'd add it partly determines what you can experience and communicate and how.
Um, if you read the very next sentence of my post, you'd see
He reported that, after living in the U.S. for a few years, he now thinks in English most of the time... and even dreams in English about half of the time
Originally my loud thoughts were in English only when I thought about computer stuff, but it spreads. I'm living in Germany, but interact maybe 50% in English.
So if they tell an account of their near car-accident the other way, they will indicate the actual compass direction the other guy came from?
Say, yesterday they headed south in their car, and the other guy came came from western direction.
In your conversation today they stand facing north. Will they actually point to the left to indicate the direction their opponent came from?
I have never seen this.
I don't disagree with you at all and I don't know why 2 guys read the "magicall properties" thing into my post. I would have thought I managed to make clear that that's not what I meant. Oh well.
Experience begets language
It's just that I believe that language also feeds back into experience. People with a clue tell me I'm wrong, but I'm stubborn.
Most non-linguists are pretty convinced of the same. After enough education to get over common sense, most linguists change their mind
Aren't you exaggerating there?
This is no more relavent nor special than saying the same thing about English speaking children in snowy areas. The construction of these complex words for snow is not all together that different from English composition of sentences.
Right, but off my point. Which was, I think, that people who have to deal with something all the time will develop both a language to discuss the nuances of the subject matter and a perception that allows to notice them. Yes it's obvious, but how the 2 interact is still interesting stuff.
If that's so, isn't that just like saying "on its east side" instead of "on starboard"
... It's not "just like saying". It's thinking in absolute coordinates (and perceiving yourself to be relative to an absolute coordinate system). But have you ever seen a native English speaker adjusting his position in present space to indicate the correct absolute direction of a past event? I don't think I have
If I may jump in
I've taken the time to hunt through used bookstores to find and read Sapir, Boas and Whorf
:)
Dude, if you don't do it for the atmosphere and leg-work, use Abebooks
I've heard stories that Turkish children growing up in Germany who end up speaking and hearing a mishmash of the two languages end up being fluent in neither
Sadly often true
and could be said to have no native language of their own.
Actually they do, it just starts to develop into something like "rastafarian vocabulary". (Note that I chose that entry instead of Jamaican English or Jamaican Creole because it partly is intentionally created.)
Thanks for the link.
:)
Interestingly, the article does not debunk the basic idea of the story, only the representation. While the article says these languages do not really have more roots for "snow" than english, it also says that given the complex suffix structure, you can build unlimited versions of the same root - for all roots, not just snow-related. And not only nouns.
What it doesn't say is how many of these versions were in use when the Eskimos lived traditional lives in great numbers, but I suspect a lot. More than versions for sand-related stuff at least
IANAL (Linguist), but I'm pretty convinced that language does inform your thinking and perception.
The Eskimo kid would learn early-on that snow has different forms, and that life depended on knowing how to behave in their vicinity. The fact that those types of snow probably were adressed by a multitude of recursive suffixes to a root noun can only have some effect on a learning brain.
Why should a brain under these conditions develop the same patterns as the brain of a kid that lives with guys that call everything "the white stuff"?
I remember having read about a study that found that community of people from a certain area in Africa, who had a long-standing history of cattle breeding and trading, had a whole lot of (92?) "words" for brown. Quoted because I'm sure that was another misrepresentation. African languages are, like those of the Eskimo-group, quite often are more complicated than the average journalist imagines.
Anyway, these people were reported to also be able to dinstinguish far many more differences of brown shades than Europeans in non-verbal tests (IIRC - might also be that the control group was non-cattle farming people in the same area.) I don't know if they tested for other colors too (green comes to mind).
Of course, if you see stuff, you might develop the wish to express it and make up words for it, just as you start to look out for stuff when you learn that there are words for it.
As always *sigh* it's probably a complex interdependence, with neither language directing perception nor the other way round, but both developing together.
Maybe another data point that helps. Someone I know is the daughter of an EU diplomat who has followed his frequent relocations. Being a diplomat's daughter, the schools she went to were good. She speaks German, English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Russian roughly equally well, i.e. fluently.
She says that she feels to have no first language in which whe is completely competent and "home", and that this sucks. She feels that there is no one language in which she can express herself completely.
Now, that might be a subjective feeling that not necessarily goes away if one does not have her "problem". I only speak German (first language) and English, and I surely don't feel completely competent in German, nor can I express myself "completely". One might even argue that if this was even possible, we would not have such a big body of adventurous poetry and prose in mature languages that over course of centuries tried ever new ways to express oneself "completely".
That said, I think I can see her point.
Questioned on the language she thinks in, she says that it depends on the language in which she first encountered a given topic or spent a lot of time to think about it. So, she thinks about relationship/"love" stuff in Spanish because she spent her first puberty years in Spain. And she thinks about professional problems in French because she studied mostly in France.
The news is that so far Sony did not have a unified online service in the manner of Xbox Live. Individual games were expected to provide their own services.
Yeah, I should have qualified that more, and specified that I mean big projects. With small ones, all bets are off in this regard, closed or open source.
From what I see, I still believe that what said holds true, and closed projects are more likely to grow into a mess, e.g. when certain functionality is needed and the deadline is close. Open developers are not smarter, it's just that the way of work IMHO encourages modularization more.
A shining case in point would be StarOffice when it was opened, I think that's rather typical for many big closed projects.
Ok, I'll save you some grief: the controller isn't one-handed at all. The one-handed base unit has the motion sensors (others are attached to the tv) and a few buttons, that's right. But you can attach an analog stick to the base unit, which you hold with the other hand. Aim right hand/arm, movement left thumb. Nintenod has said they haven't shown all they have, so I expect additional extensions.
See the TGS 2005 teaser video
You are right, that was a dreadful peace of writing. I'll try again, I think first time I was confused by the amount of things you got wrong in only 3 lines.
/. with individual viewpoints and opinions can have made them.
/. hive mind (or one person, in your new interpretation). They only appear contradictory because you leave out the supporting arguments for both positions, leaving only the headlines.
There were 2 intermingled problems with your reasoning.
First, you said "I dont see how can you beleive it when Mitnick says it and how you can refute it when Allchin says the same thing", which you constructed as a contradiction*. However there is no need to even consider the content of the statements to see that there is no contradiction, because individual people on
You now say that you were talking about both statements being made by one poster, but that was not obvious from your post - why didn't you directly address those users?
But even the content of the 2 statements can perfectly be argued consistently. Thus, they aren't even contradictory if expressed by a
You can't believe it because you (1) are making up an argument for the aim to refute it, commonly called a strawman, and (2) treat a collection of people as an individual. (Is there a fallacy name for this too?)
/. users, you find both people who say "duh" in the one, and others who say "Stop Fudding" in the other story.
ad (1)
Mitnick did not say "it's easier to hack" (I assume TFA/you mean "crack" here) which would mean that it's easier to get unauthorized access.
In fact TFA quoted Mitnick as saying that finding vulnerabilities in OSS code is easier, since it's easier to analyze for holes. This is true for both black-hats and white-hats, so it gets evened out somewhat. On the other hand, finding holes in closed source is harder for black-hats, but fixing them is impossible for white-hats, so overall this might put black-hats at an advantage.
And you leave out that OSS is not just "GPL the source and put it on a server". Mature OSS projects generally are modularized well, because parallel development is greatly hampered otherwise. Closed projects tend to be much dirtier in this respect.
Incidentially, this separation also helps secure coding.
ad (2)
It should not be a surprise that among > 1,000,000
Actually, what happens is this:
Some people say "duh", because, well, duh, but you leave out the supporting argument that while Mitnick's assertion is obviously true, TFA left out the fact that it is easier to fix also.
Other people say "FUD", because they forget that Allchin is somewhat right: putting Windows in the open now, necessarily with insufficient preparation and code cleanup, would make it more insecure. But that does not mean that it couldn't be more secure had it been constructed in the open from the beginning.
And I can't believe there are idiots who modded you +5 Insightful.
Thanks, your post saves my evening from quite some googling :)
So they are giving him an award for breaking the terms of a licence agreement? (...) a group that was paying Tridge had licenced the software
Tridgell never entered into a license agreement with BitMover, and whether license agreements entered by other ODSL employees extended automatically to Tridge is pretty questionable.
if you don't like the licence you use something else.
Right, sourcepuller.