[lojban] Re: Saphir-Whorf partially validated

[John E Clifford <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

--- Matt Arnold <matt.mattarn@gmail.com> wrote:

> The earlier study has been brought up, if I
> recall correctly; but I'm
> surprised I haven't seen this latest study
> discussed here yet. A recent
> paper titled "Whorf Hypothesis is Supported in
> the Right Visual Field but
> not in the Left" confirmed that words can alter
> how we perceive the world,
> up to a point. Excerpt:
> 
> An earlier study by Paul Kay and colleagues had
> shown that speakers of
> English and Tarahumara perceive colors
> differently: English speakers found
> blues and greens to be more distinct from each
> other than speakers of
> Tarahumara did, as if the English "green" /
> "blue" linguistic distinction
> sharpened the perceptual difference between the
> colors themselves. The
> present study essentially repeated the English
> part of that earlier test,
> but also made sure that colors were presented
> to either the right or the
> left half of the visual field ? something the
> earlier study hadn't done ? so
> as to test whether language influences the
> right half of our visual world
> more than the left half, as predicted by brain
> organization.
> 
>
http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/06/060131.regier.shtml
> 
> -epkat

This appears to have the usual problems with S-W
tests.  First, vocabulary items have next to
nothing to do with the S-W thesis, which is about
grammatical categories and structures and their
effect on patterns of thought: ways of looking at
the world.  Secondly, vocabulary studies are
almost bound to be indecisive: a culture values a
distinction and has words for both sides of the
distinction, but these facts in no way
demonstrate a causal link in either direction. 
It would be a least as likely (if not more so)
that the desirability of being careful about
various types of snow led to the language having
words for the various types as (than) the other
way round.  To be sure, the brain split results
are interesting but not obviously related to S-W
any more than the usual results, though it does
suggest that color recognition is centered
somewhere near language in the brain.



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