Date: Tue, 30 Dec 1997 12:33:19 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199712301733.MAA27230@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Steven Belknap Sender: Lojban list From: Steven Belknap Subject: Re: knowledge and belief X-To: Robin Turner X-cc: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 841 X-From-Space-Date: Tue Dec 30 12:33:22 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU >>This is imperfect in English as >>the degree is not reducible to a numeric value, but the ordering was >>absolutely consistent among the three native English speakers who were in >>my lab. (So this is an ordinal, but not an interval scale.) Interestingly, >>the one non-native English speaker (native Mandarin speaker) did not agree >>with this analysis, although his English is quite fluent. He opined that >>know/believe/think were synonyms! >> >A Sapir-Whorf effect?? > >Robin No, as the issue was disagreement by the native Chinese speaker regarding the meaning of English words, rather than a difference in thinking between the native-Chinese English speaker and American English speakers. -Steven Steven Belknap, M.D. Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Medicine University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria