From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Wed Aug 05 13:33:09 2009 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:33:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1MYnAa-0007gA-UL for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:33:09 -0700 Received: from web81306.mail.mud.yahoo.com ([68.142.199.122]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with smtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1MYnAX-0007fa-BA for lojban-list@lojban.org; Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:33:08 -0700 Received: (qmail 47967 invoked by uid 60001); 5 Aug 2009 20:32:58 -0000 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=yahoo.com; s=s1024; t=1249504378; bh=gCYf88drzJQfPeT6SA276eBY//jZseBh0fHcmTEYr1o=; h=Message-ID:X-YMail-OSG:Received:X-Mailer:References:Date:From:Subject:To:In-Reply-To:MIME-Version:Content-Type; b=uOAlBNh8mZuQfUJoSYnUeyTW6Ujb3gOal2rOXpxnQQnK6T22iZY+l9N7FQRSEeD4UwZpFPRb8duzMutz177SlCuFYRiOAYB/eKpkMsUgGNdifx51G9L8bMubePgZSAQBwGkr8HAbv7yzxrXW+r/HU411HgXqaUTLLHjPECd/YC8= DomainKey-Signature:a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=yahoo.com; h=Message-ID:X-YMail-OSG:Received:X-Mailer:References:Date:From:Subject:To:In-Reply-To:MIME-Version:Content-Type; b=rDU7XB4uVGrvwcqyaKkoWe/mnFHsk8FBZE7tHmo3YNBTeFhMRKGsXRhmNkYui8c7sBC0xzdfH3F1vNzugGwx2dN3vmvRgwaEKNFSj7UcDu9y7o4HsnLoXNyeMuPepWOnZTQ+vSm6s8J6+Eb7fq3NqY2KlgOLqbaPNVvrw5pLanI=; Message-ID: <118604.47821.qm@web81306.mail.mud.yahoo.com> X-YMail-OSG: lKeqdzEVM1kUiTzkLWurik4IhiDIkWXB6lBUu_iLThlFCij85M1Q7XE0vQsTqjHlZqQ81t45FtazRiOyMllcwTU3uG3u7Ne9EXFKo9Ig0uvaRHpPQkAOYzjIS7EylsexC29MTQCa0jN0VZ3kejxsKycqFUlIkViWaNbtxDQvHY9PhaUklxBv2ZHpQPvh1_pmiHeQ8oNAzqaonF1m5DQFxep6hPsqKjjANQhz3e1J_Iwcdg3V00rJnk7ZcgnwHmMqCQU5BbrvNHjMUU3HDfb0e558OXqT2SDrkB0qubVs3kqNZSbmIYAfh6oswPOE6fIqskg.kcd4IwD3EPfmby20l_qbG8X3oSAxRCz6fblu Received: from [24.207.224.145] by web81306.mail.mud.yahoo.com via HTTP; Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:32:57 PDT X-Mailer: YahooMailRC/1357.22 YahooMailWebService/0.7.289.10 References: <987611.38248.qm@web81308.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <5715b9300908050714m209051e9ud8ab75e7b236cc85@mail.gmail.com> <500926.81477.qm@web81303.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <5715b9300908050935w48164fc4oe9bbea8a3f91c6f5@mail.gmail.com> <162864.32099.qm@web81304.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <5715b9300908051051x46bd00b9p5ad69453b83d122f@mail.gmail.com> <238087.29513.qm@web81301.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <5715b9300908051153n66567fafyb8fe10bc2cfa10a7@mail.gmail.com> Date: Wed, 5 Aug 2009 13:32:57 -0700 (PDT) From: John E Clifford Subject: [lojban] Re: Experiments in Sapir Whorf To: lojban-list@lojban.org In-Reply-To: <5715b9300908051153n66567fafyb8fe10bc2cfa10a7@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="0-1719854639-1249504377=:47821" X-archive-position: 15921 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: kali9putra@yahoo.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list --0-1719854639-1249504377=:47821 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Oh, probably not so strong as causality; just that they grow up together. Unfortunately (well, for this issue at least), all the good cases of imposition of a new language or culture are too far in the past to have really good data about either the before or the after. The appeal of the Loglan/Lojban test would be that we could get that data, the flaw is that we can't get the language to dominate the subjects' culture -- they'll live their ordinary lives outside the lab (and they may be too old anyhow, etc. etc. ). (I'll pass over the fact that Loglan/Lojban is not well designed for the test, since it is not different from English in almost any possibly relevant way.) ________________________________ From: Luke Bergen To: lojban-list@lojban.org Sent: Wednesday, August 5, 2009 1:53:39 PM Subject: [lojban] Re: Experiments in Sapir Whorf heh, kind of reminds me of soc 101 and the "sociological paradox" that people create/define society but society drives human behavior. Maybe language is the same. Language evolves according to our perception but then we see things in terms of language. A cycle of causality? On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 2:35 PM, John E Clifford wrote: There ae more general claims, but they tend to wander off into untestability rather quickly. Almost all of them still remain somewhat concrete, that is they talk about languages different in some particular aspect (not just noun v verb) and some particular aspect of "the way we look at things." Of course, some of the aspects get a little untestable themselves (melodic languages lead to artistic people, to not quite invent a horrible example). The root idea of all this is that language affects culture, which seems likely to be true though hard to prove. Unfortunately, it is also clearly the case that culture affects language, so covariation doesn't show which way the affect goes (or whether there is a tertium that governs both) > > > > ________________________________ From: Luke Bergen >To: lojban-list@lojban.org >Sent: Wednesday, August 5, 2009 12:51:04 PM > >Subject: [lojban] Re: Experiments in Sapir Whorf > > >>Wow, I thought SWH was more general than that. Is there a hypothesis that is more general than "verbs make you think verby and nouns make you think nouny"? I've read a few different articles that talk about people who speak languages with certain fundamental differences having fundamentally different ways of thinking about certain things. I always assumed that they were SWH like, but evidently they were not. For instance, I was under the impression that things like: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080714111940.htm were SWH meets memory. > >Also it's disappointing to hear that Whorf was so.... lingui-centric? But I'd rather not throw the baby out with the bath-water. It seems like the root idea is a good one even if you believe that the original author of the idea had his various problems. > >mu'o mi'e pafcribe > > > >On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 1:38 PM, John E Clifford wrote: > >The hypothesis was never formulated in more than casual terms by the "originators." About as clear as it gets (not actually in either of them) is that grammatical categories of a language affect the native ontology of the speakers: if there are nouns, adjectives and verbs, the speakers see the world as composed of isolated things that have properties and do events; if the only major category is verbs, then the speaker sees the world as as a holistic process, with temporary -- but constantly changing -- eddies. And so on (though it is not clear what is associated with other languages). To make matters somewhat worse, Whorf at least thought he knew how the world really was and therefore implicitly gave >> added values to those languages (Hopi, Menominee, i.e., the one he had studied) which gave their speakers the right view (the outer edges of Mahayana -- which is, of course originally set forth in a language with verbs, nouns and adjectives, whatever the native grammarians may say). >> >> ________________________________ From: Luke Bergen >>To: lojban-list@lojban.org >>Sent: Wednesday, August 5, 2009 11:35:21 AM >> >>Subject: [lojban] Re: Experiments in Sapir Whorf >> >> >>>>I'm not sure I follow you here. Are you saying that the hypothesis is defined to vaguely to make realistic/specific tests? >> >>- Luke Bergen >> >> >> >>On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 12:28 PM, John E Clifford wrote: >> >>Yes, it sorta does in this case, since the claimed effects and claimed causes seem to be very familiar and open to examination and tinkering. >>> >>> >>> >>> ________________________________ From: Luke Bergen >>> >>>To: lojban-list@lojban.org >>>Sent: Wednesday, August 5, 2009 9:14:25 AM >>> >>>Subject: [lojban] Re: Experiments in Sapir Whorf >>> >>> >>>>>>How does failing to come up with a testable hypothesis make something a crock? It just means we've failed to test it so far. There are a lot of things in the universe that we don't know how to test yet, that doesn't make them "a crock" does it? >>> >>>- Luke Bergen >>> >>> >>> >>>On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 9:59 AM, John E Clifford wrote: >>> >>>The negative results of sixty years (more or less, probably more) of trying to formulate a testable hypothesis that is even vaguely related to what Ed and Ben said. The best of these (possibly testable) were either trivially true (the vocab cases) or blatantly false (the strong metaphysical determination cases), and only the latter looked much like what the two actually said. Of the rest, the untestable ones (though it didn't stop people from claiming to try) yielded no significant results (of course) and the testable ones had nought to do with the professor and the claims adjuster (and the results were still generally negative). >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> ________________________________ From: "MorphemeAddict@wmconnect.com" >>>> >>>>To: lojban-list@lojban.org >>>>Sent: Tuesday, August 4, 2009 9:30:22 PM >>>> >>>>Subject: [lojban] Re: Experiments in Sapir Whorf >>>> >>>> >>>>In a message dated 8/3/2009 15:39:24 Eastern Daylight Time, kali9putra@yahoo.com writes: >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>>SWH is about deep level grammatical categories and ontology, not about vocabulary tricks. (It is still a crock, of course, but at least it is an interesting crock). >>>>> >>>>> >>>> >>>>What evidence do you have that it's a crock? >>>> >>>> >>>>stevo >>>> >>> >>> >> >> > > --0-1719854639-1249504377=:47821 Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
Oh, probably not so strong as causality; just that they grow up together.  Unfortunately (well, for this issue at least), all the good cases of imposition of a new language or culture are too far in the past to have really good data about either the before or the after. The appeal of the Loglan/Lojban test would be that we could get that data, the flaw is that we can't get the language to dominate the subjects' culture -- they'll live their ordinary lives outside the lab (and they may be too old anyhow, etc. etc. ).  (I'll pass over the fact that Loglan/Lojban is not well designed for the test, since it is not different from English in almost any possibly relevant way.)

From: Luke Bergen <lukeabergen@gmail.com>
To: lojban-list@lojban.org
Sent: Wednesday, August 5, 2009 1:53:39 PM
Subject: [lojban] Re: Experiments in Sapir Whorf

heh, kind of reminds me of soc 101 and the "sociological paradox" that people create/define society but society drives human behavior.  Maybe language is the same.  Language evolves according to our perception but then we see things in terms of language.  A cycle of causality?


On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 2:35 PM, John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:
There ae more general claims, but they tend to wander off into untestability rather quickly.  Almost all of them still remain somewhat concrete, that is they talk about languages different in some particular aspect (not just noun v verb) and some particular aspect of "the way we look at things."  Of course, some of the aspects get a little untestable themselves (melodic languages lead to artistic people, to not quite invent a horrible example).  The root idea of all this is that language affects culture, which seems likely to be true though hard to prove.  Unfortunately, it is also clearly the case that culture affects language, so covariation doesn't show which way the affect goes (or whether there is a tertium that governs both)

From: Luke Bergen <lukeabergen@gmail.com>
To: lojban-list@lojban.org
Sent: Wednesday, August 5, 2009 12:51:04 PM

Subject: [lojban] Re: Experiments in Sapir Whorf

Wow, I thought SWH was more general than that.  Is there a hypothesis that is more general than "verbs make you think verby and nouns make you think nouny"?  I've read a few different articles that talk about people who speak languages with certain fundamental differences having fundamentally different ways of thinking about certain things.  I always assumed that they were SWH like, but evidently they were not.  For instance, I was under the impression that things like: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080714111940.htm were SWH meets memory.

Also it's disappointing to hear that Whorf was so.... lingui-centric?  But I'd rather not throw the baby out with the bath-water.  It seems like the root idea is a good one even if you believe that the original author of the idea had his various problems.

mu'o mi'e pafcribe


On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 1:38 PM, John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:
The hypothesis was never formulated in more than casual terms by the "originators."  About as clear as it gets (not actually in either of them) is that grammatical categories of a language affect the native ontology of the speakers: if there are nouns, adjectives and verbs, the speakers see the world as composed of isolated things that have properties and do events; if the only major category is verbs, then the speaker sees the world as as a holistic process, with temporary -- but constantly changing -- eddies.  And so on (though it is not clear what is associated with other languages).  To make matters somewhat worse, Whorf at least thought he knew how the world really was and therefore implicitly gave added values to those languages (Hopi, Menominee, i.e., the one he had studied) which gave their speakers the right view (the outer edges of Mahayana -- which is, of course originally set forth in a language with verbs, nouns and adjectives, whatever the native grammarians may say).
Sent: Wednesday, August 5, 2009 11:35:21 AM

Subject: [lojban] Re: Experiments in Sapir Whorf

I'm not sure I follow you here.  Are you saying that the hypothesis is defined to vaguely to make realistic/specific tests?

- Luke Bergen


On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 12:28 PM, John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:
Yes, it sorta does in this case, since the claimed effects and claimed causes seem to be very familiar and open to examination and tinkering.

From: Luke Bergen <lukeabergen@gmail.com>Sent: Wednesday, August 5, 2009 9:14:25 AM

Subject: [lojban] Re: Experiments in Sapir Whorf

How does failing to come up with a testable hypothesis make something a crock?  It just means we've failed to test it so far.  There are a lot of things in the universe that we don't know how to test yet,  that doesn't make them "a crock" does it?

- Luke Bergen


On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 9:59 AM, John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:
The negative results of sixty years (more or less, probably more) of trying to formulate a testable hypothesis that is even vaguely related to what Ed and Ben said.  The best of these (possibly testable) were either trivially true (the vocab cases) or blatantly false (the strong metaphysical determination cases), and only the latter looked much like what the two actually said. Of the rest, the untestable ones (though it didn't stop people from claiming to try) yielded no significant results (of course) and the testable ones had nought to do with the professor and the claims adjuster (and the results were still generally negative).

From: "MorphemeAddict@wmconnect.com" <MorphemeAddict@wmconnect.com>Sent: Tuesday, August 4, 2009 9:30:22 PM

Subject: [lojban] Re: Experiments in Sapir Whorf

In a message dated 8/3/2009 15:39:24 Eastern Daylight Time, kali9putra@yahoo.com writes:


SWH is about deep level grammatical categories and ontology, not about vocabulary tricks.  (It is still a crock, of course, but at least it is an interesting crock).


What evidence do you have that it's a crock?

stevo









--0-1719854639-1249504377=:47821-- To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.