tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-520807396714463309.post4249543250618233094..comments2024-02-12T02:22:30.561-05:00Comments on The Lousy Linguist: the original WhorfChrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09558846279006287148noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-520807396714463309.post-54724366220339904902010-09-28T13:20:33.326-04:002010-09-28T13:20:33.326-04:00As someone who lived in another culture and langua...As someone who lived in another culture and language (spanish) for 4 months, I could not stop thinking about the legitimacy of Whorf's premise. Language affects perception, and shapes it to focus on some things to the exclusions of others. Language is the storehouse of tradition, values and coming to consciousness. This was the most liberating insight I'd had in years.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-520807396714463309.post-65578771370646010862010-09-07T17:26:47.345-04:002010-09-07T17:26:47.345-04:00Chris, I think the big picture answer is that sure...Chris, I think the big picture answer is that sure, lexical inventories differ. One rich source of evidence is words for emotions. You can find words for certain kinds of emotions in Japanese, for example, that you can't find in English and vice versa. But we don't want to jump to the conclusion that this means those emotional experience is impossible for English speakers to feel.<br /><br />You may want to track down the work of <a href="http://arts.anu.edu.au/languages/linguistics/AnnaW.asp" rel="nofollow">Anna Wierzbicka</a> who has done extensive work on emotion words across languages.Chrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09558846279006287148noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-520807396714463309.post-40965176405889882122010-09-06T13:03:12.178-04:002010-09-06T13:03:12.178-04:00Thanks for the PDF link; I read it but was disappo...Thanks for the PDF link; I read it but was disappointed. The author speaks at great length about the extent to which the mythical meme has spread through the population. I was also hoping for a detailed explanation of the truth, but the author says little about that, only that Boas cited four different words for snow. I would have liked to see more detail about how the words are agglutinated with others to build numerous compounds. <br /><br />Can you point me to any discussions of environmental effects on language? I suppose that I should just read Deutsch's new book, but I'm sure that somebody else has published on the matter. Do jungle-dwellers who have a large pharmacology of plants have extended vocabularies for describing the colors, leaf-shapes, stems, and flowers of plants? Do seashore-dwellers show any excess of words regarding surface conditions on the sea?<br /><br />On the other side of the coin, do we have any evidence that some languages have small vocabularies for rare experiences? Do Australian aborigine languages have a dearth of words for snow? Are the central Australian aborigine languages poverty-stricken in words for bodies of water? Do the Polynesian languages show a lack of words for large expanses of land, horses, or masonry?Chris Crawfordhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14926445098765433310noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-520807396714463309.post-62864415294149078592010-09-06T09:40:10.948-04:002010-09-06T09:40:10.948-04:00Chris, thanks for the interesting questions.
The...Chris, thanks for the interesting questions. <br /><br />There is no reason, as far as I know, to believe that agglutinating languages have a larger possible set of words than other kinds of languages. Isolating languages can simply make up new word forms, presumably infinitely. <br /><br />Whorf himself was making the point that the words a language has is related to the lives that its speakers lead.<br /><br />Check out this PDF for a more complete discussion: <a href="http://users.utu.fi/freder/Pullum-Eskimo-VocabHoax.pdf" rel="nofollow">The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax</a>Chrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09558846279006287148noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-520807396714463309.post-23187620318988149332010-09-04T16:27:44.820-04:002010-09-04T16:27:44.820-04:00A question regarding the "Eskimo snow hoax&qu...A question regarding the "Eskimo snow hoax". I know that the concept, as usually presented ('Eskimos have X words for snow') is incorrect, but what I read was that, because the Inuit language is an agglutinating language (do I use the correct term correctly?), there are theoretically an infinite number of words about snow, or zero words about snow, depending solely on how you treat the agglutination. <br /><br />My first question is: is the slightly more nuanced explanation correct?<br /><br />My second question is: would it be fair to say that the Inuit language has more ways to talk about snow (regardless of how you classify words and phrases) than, say, a typical Khoisan language, solely because frozen water is much more common in the Inuit environment than in the Khoisan environment?Chris Crawfordhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14926445098765433310noreply@blogger.com