Back in the day, the Sapir-Whorf
Hypothesis (SWH)was a hot metaphysico-psycho-sociological issue. It
held that the language we speak affects the way we perceive the
world. There were numerous versions ranging from that our language
limits what we can think and determines how we do think about the
world to much weaker claims our language favor certain views and
inclines us toward them. In the great scheme of things, languages
got divided into a number of groups based on what were taken to be
significant features. In particular, the large division was between
languages which built up sentences by sticking words for things
(“nouns” to take a convenient term) into slots provided by words
for actions and relations (“verbs”) and languages in which
sentences were typically one word which encompassed the whole
situation (a sort of verb, again). These corresponded to world-views
in which independent and enduring separate items acted and interacted
autonomously and those in which the whole was a process, a flow of
interconnected and evanescent areas, eddies in the stream, as it
were. There were several other patterns but these two were prominent
since they were displayed, on the one hand, by the anthropologists
who were conducting this research and, on the other, by a number of
Native American tribes that were the scientists chief subjects.
Through the middle years of the last
century a number of groups worked to decide just what the limits of
this hypothesis ought to be and how to test it. One approach was
Loglan, a language with a controlled built-in metaphysical slant,
which was to be taught to people with another slant to see if they
changed in ways the Loglan slant suggested. However, starting in the
late 1950s, another factor arose: changes in both psychology and
linguistics. On the one hand, new methods of psychological testing
which did not involve the use of language in the old way were applied
to people who did not speak the language of the investigators, On
the other hand, linguistic theory sprang beyond the peculiarities of
the surface grammars of languages to look for underlying
regularities. The result of these two was to call the basis oof SWH
into question. In psychology, it turned out tha people who spoke
radically different languages did not handle reality in different
ways, once language was taken out of the examination. In
lingusitics, it turned out that radically different language
structures could be derived from a common core using different
selections of the same rules, built on the same principles.
Eventually, it even became conceivable (even plausible for some) that
there was a single sort of representation from which the sentences in
every language are derived. In short, the search for the causal
mechanism for differences in perceiving the world in the differences
in the grammatical structure of the various languages was called off
because there were in reality, at a deep scientific level, neither
differences in perception nor differences in grammatical structure.
The appearance of these correlations was a mere tautology: we took
people as perceiving the world differently because they talked about
it differently. But the differences were superficial.
Of course, no reasonably viable
scientific project dies easily. So people who have invested in SWH
continue to experiment and to find ways around the developments of
the last 50 years and more. In particular, though differences in
vocabulary played a very small part in early discussions (among
scientists – popularizers regularly stressed these: the number of
Eskimo words for snow, as the classic example, since these are easy
to discuss without getting into theory), modern discussions have
stressed them. And come up with real results, namely that, if a
distinction is significant in one language and ot in another,
speakers of the first language will be better at making that
distinction than people of the second. Famously (the best results
regularly reported) , speakers of Russian, a language with two words
for blue, light and dark (roughly) are a just measurable fraction of
a second faster at detecting differences in shades of blue than
speakers of English, say. On the other side, monolingual Navajos,
whose language does not distinguish blue and green (they both are
called turquoise) are not detectably slower than Anglos at sorting
blue and green objects into piles of similar color.
If even the more grandiose
possibilities of the hypothesis are at such a low level (either
negative or trivial), what can be said for Loglan/Lojban? First, as
test of the initial hypothesis in its full form, Loglan was a bust.
It was to be taught to speakers of noun-and-verb languages, of
things that go into slots, but it is itself just such a language
(hidden behind some truly goofy and muddled terminology), so it is
not moving toward a new metaphysics at all. And, in fairness, it
gave up that “new metaphysics” line early on in favor of
“cultural neutrality”, which it aimed to achieve mainly by
vocabulary; it would have everything that any language had (tenses
AND aspects AND modes ….), all more or less equally available. Of
course, only the ones familiar to users from their native languages
get used, but they are all there. The other shift was a growing
emphasis – courtesy mainly of the languages' popularity with
computer scientists – on freedom form structural ambiguity. Every
utterance of Lojban (in particular, though the goal goes back to
Loglan) can be shown grammatical in only one way, it has a unique
parse. (And presumably a correct one, that is one that corresponds
perfectly to that underlying proposition from which the sentence is
derived by the selection of rules peculiar to this language.
Whatever the fate of the monoparsing claim is at the moment, this
second point – which is the interesting one for refuting the
Hypothesis – is not demonstrated.) As Lojban is set up, protecting
tis claim involves a considerable stock of minutiae and it is not
clear that people can actually learn to negotiate this field in real
time, but to even come close is an impressive advance in language.
(The claim that the underlying proposition is itself always
unambiguous is also suspect.) Learning Lojban is not a total
waste, then, even relative to learning just any other language, which
is always a valuable thing to do.
On Monday, January 26, 2015 2:21 AM, ravas <ravas@outlook.com> wrote:
On Sunday, January 25, 2015 at 11:17:18 AM UTC-8, afke...@gmail.com wrote:
a'oi
our main question is whether you would agree with this theory or not.
I agree with it.
Does being able to speak in a different, logical language also mean that you are able to think in a different, logical manner?
And seeing that Lojban (most probably) is not your first language, do you believe that people are able to learn to change the way they percieve reality, just like they are able to learn a new language?
What is reality? Do we ever truly perceive it?
I could say the brain records electromagnetic patterns
which we then interpret as reality.
Some people believe we generate and project reality.
What is aware of the attention being placed on thought?
I started learning Lojban last month
and I can say that it has changed my thinking by
making me aware of aspects of language.
We could say that this would happen while learning any second language.
I think the real proof will only be available when you are truly thinking in the second language,
as opposed to translating in your mind.
Before I realized the concept of linguistic relativity existed,
I realized a major aspect of English (among other languages)
is putting things into two categories: "good" and "bad", "right" and "wrong".
I assume it started with the origin of language.
Some of the first words undoubtedly had the meaning: "edible" and "not edible", "dangerous" and "not dangerous".
But it's not strictly practical or fact based anymore... there are opinions and morals.
So what happens when you simply swap the categories?
Right is now wrong (morally).
Good is now bad.
Surely your life would change over night if you could accomplish this (and wanted to >_<).
So for example, does someone who can speak a Native American language as
well as regular English have the possibility to view reality in two
different ways?
I don't think so. Perspective gained is perspective gained.
Maybe if you could somehow completely segregate the two languages in your mind...
Is this the reason you are so interested in Lojban, because it enables you to think and perceive the world more logically? And if not, where did your interest for the Lojban language come from?
I started and almost finished my own English spelling reform.
(soon, door, foot... arg)
Spelling reform is nothing new though; and I decided that no reform will ever be globally accepted
because people value Etymology, and there is just too much that would need to be "translated"
before we could stop teaching the old versions of words.
The solution is simply to learn and promote a language with a phonemic orthography.
I gave Esperanto a try and after a week or two I found
http://www.101languages.net/esperanto/criticism.html
(notice the quote at the top ;D)
which made me aware of Ido and led me to the article
http://idolinguo.org.uk/whyido.htm
Every weakness of Esperanto I had noticed was in that article,
and addressed in the Ido reform.
However, the first article also made me aware of Lojban.
I decided to learn Lojban because of the promotion of linguistic relativity,
the fact that it is not Latin based, and my interest in programming.
Side note:
Since you already know English, I want to recommend the book
"Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life".
It helped me see detrimental aspects of English like: "I have to..."
Now I always think "I choose to... because..."
It also suggests some beautiful concepts such as considering:
what do you want the person's reason to be for doing something for you.
stela selckiku:
Perhaps the most perfectly Lojbanic of Lojban sentences is the sentence "
", the empty sentence, which of course asserts nothing at all about
anything, and does so in perfect elegance. All of Lojban springs from
this emptiness.
Have you ever read anything by Walter Russel?
From his book "A new concept of the Universe" (rather fitting for this conversation):
If the power to cause motion is in the balanced state of rest, it necessarily follows that energy is in the stillness of rest and not in
motion which is effect of cause.