Subject: Re: [lojban] Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2001 07:18:03 -0400

At 06:04 PM 06/11/2001 -0400, [email-masked] wrote:
Sapir never formulates the hypothesis explicitly, but it is adumbrated in
>many of his works -- as well as in the works of many predecessors back at
>least to von Humboldt (several pieces in the Sapir collection that I remember
>as Language and Culture, but I don't have a copy of, deal with the themes of
>the hypothesis). Not much has happened in the whole area since the late '50's
>when linguists got all wrapped up in computation.

Actually, this isn't quite true. In the 80s, Kay and Kempton, doing some 
color-word research, accidentally found some technical confirmation of 
Sapir-Whorf, which rendered the controversy alive again. The Chomskyans of 
course have tended to denigrate the hypothesis, while other schools of 
linguistics seem agnostic about the issue.

lojbab
--
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org