tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-520807396714463309.post4877620115137218214..comments2024-02-12T02:22:30.561-05:00Comments on The Lousy Linguist: What actually affects thought?Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09558846279006287148noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-520807396714463309.post-44170936396296559372010-09-03T10:50:06.789-04:002010-09-03T10:50:06.789-04:00Michael, thanks for the citation. I'll try to ...Michael, thanks for the citation. I'll try to track it down. Still sounds like a random occurrence rather than a crucial data point, but I'll keep my mind open.Chrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09558846279006287148noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-520807396714463309.post-26737367200754480322010-09-03T06:42:35.740-04:002010-09-03T06:42:35.740-04:00The anecdote about the Guugu Yimithirr speaker poi...The anecdote about the Guugu Yimithirr speaker pointing to his chest to indicate the direction behind him that Deutscher mentions can be found in Levinsons 2003 book Space in Language and Cognition (p. 5f.). It is describeds as one "of the small experiences that drove home to me personally the simple message that human spatial cognition is not fixed,b ut culturally variable:" (p.5) "5. Jack Bambi,Guugu Yimithirr master story-teller,talking about a<br />man who used to live nearby points directly at himself – no,there’s no connection to himself,he’ s pointing south-east,to where the man used to live,through his body as if it was invisible. Years later,I have the same immediate misinterpretations looking at Tzeltal speakers,and realize this is the same phenomenon: in some striking way,the ego has been reduced to an abstract point in space." (p.6)Michael Pleyerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17318686099980839847noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-520807396714463309.post-41092477492102620782010-09-02T20:04:44.814-04:002010-09-02T20:04:44.814-04:00Lauren, thanks for the thoughtful feedback. I'...Lauren, thanks for the thoughtful feedback. I'll look into Levinson's work this weekend (read some of it back in grad school, but the memory is fuzzy...too much beer, or not enough, haha.)Chrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09558846279006287148noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-520807396714463309.post-50151929460253937952010-09-02T18:40:21.880-04:002010-09-02T18:40:21.880-04:00Hi Chris,
The research Guy Deutscher mentions re...Hi Chris, <br /><br />The research Guy Deutscher mentions regarding Guugu Yimithirr was conducted by John Haviland:<br /><br />Pointing, gesture spaces, and mental maps. Language and gesture: Window into thought and action. D. McNeill. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 13-46.<br /><br />It's a very well known and regarded paper in gesture research areas, which is where I first came across it. <br /><br />Regarding mirrored hotel rooms - it's in reference to the now famous experiments done regarding spatial typology and cognition. Deutscher perhaps didn't explain these experiments too well; it's hard to without pictures. Basically say you're looking at a table with three toy cars on it, a red one, yellow one and blue one. Then you're spun around 180 degrees. If you're an English speaker you'll line them up again as red, yellow and blue because English has a relative space system. If you were a GY speaker you would line them up as blue, yellow, red because you speak an absolute space language so you're thinking in the cardinal points regardless of where you're facing. <br /><br />This experiment is great because it's not linguistic, but tapping into habits shaped by the language we speak. You can find lots of articles on this topic at Steve Levinson's page (http://www.mpi.nl/people/levinson-stephen/publications). <br /><br />There's lots of other really great research that only gets a passing reference in the Deutscher article. That is the problem with pop science articles - they're never referenced!<br /><br />--------------------<br />http://lozguistics.blogspot.com/Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02576431124878418882noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-520807396714463309.post-60431136496323203482010-09-02T08:20:04.569-04:002010-09-02T08:20:04.569-04:00Thnaks for the interesting comments on Deutscher&#...Thnaks for the interesting comments on Deutscher's article. I have to say that, as a native speaker of German, I'm very sceptical of Boroditsky's work on gender-induced association biases that he discusses. <br />I don't feel in any way that a bridge ("die Brücke") is somehow more "feminine" than "masculine." What is more, basically every other German native speaker I told about these experiments had the same "What the Hell?"-reaction, if I remember correctly. It may well be that gender may affect, or better, 'prime', my description of a bridge in a test, but I can't imagine it affecting my thought in any significant way when it's not in an artifial context focussed on purely linguistic description.Michael Pleyerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17318686099980839847noreply@blogger.com