From lojbab@lojban.org Wed Jun 13 08:29:48 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: lojbab@lojban.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_1_3); 13 Jun 2001 15:29:48 -0000 Received: (qmail 59420 invoked from network); 13 Jun 2001 14:51:15 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by l10.egroups.com with QMQP; 13 Jun 2001 14:51:15 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO stmpy-1.cais.net) (205.252.14.71) by mta1 with SMTP; 13 Jun 2001 14:51:15 -0000 Received: from bob.lojban.org (156.dynamic.cais.com [207.226.56.156]) by stmpy-1.cais.net (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id f5DEp8g04835; Wed, 13 Jun 2001 10:51:08 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <4.3.2.7.2.20010613104438.00dca3d0@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: vir1036/pop.cais.com@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.2 Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2001 10:56:23 -0400 To: Edward Cherlin Subject: Re: [lojban] Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis Cc: lojban@yahoogroups.com In-Reply-To: References: <4.3.2.7.2.20010612071438.00dae700@127.0.0.1> <4.3.2.7.2.20010612071438.00dae700@127.0.0.1> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" At 12:50 PM 06/12/2001 -0700, Edward Cherlin wrote: >At 7:18 AM -0400 6/12/01, Bob LeChevalier (lojbab) wrote: >>At 06:04 PM 06/11/2001 -0400, pycyn@aol.com wrote: >>...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. > >The best recent example is non-standard arithmetic, which comes in two >forms, one from Robinson's model theory, and the other from Conway's >advances in game theory. Both provide consistent but significantly >different arithmetics with actual infinitesimals, and both can be extended >to analysis. Without the appropriate definitions of terms and proofs of >theorems, there is no way anybody outside the field can understand what >either form is talking about, since mathematicians had previously "proved" >that arithmetic with infinitesimals was impossible, and in particular >Peano thought that he had proved the impossibility of any non-standard >models of the natural numbers. But of course the definitions of the terms and the proofs can be provided, and presumably the contradiction is therein resolved. >When free from political or ontological limitations, mathematicians >constantly come up with new ideas for which there is no appropriate >language, and then invent one, or several, and test which terminology and >notation best helps them think about the problems. And they successfully communicate using this new language to other mathematicians. Similarly, English speakers can deduce some information about the text of Jabberwocky based on the known rules of the language. >In any case, some versions of SW are clearly true, and others are clearly >false. I don't know which ones the linguistic theorists think they are >arguing about. Usually they are talking about what is called the "strong form" of linguistic relativity, which is presumed to be disproved by the fact that we can translate or paraphrase anything from one language to another. This shows that there is nothing inherent to the target language that renders it incapable of expressing anything in the source language. Kay and Kempton showed that there seemed to be unexpected color perception differences between English speakers and those of other languages that could not be explained except by a SWH effect. This was a sidenote to their primary research, and I don't know where things went. It is really a rather small area of SWH research, one that focuses on word meanings rather than on grammar (which is the focus of most Loglan Project SWH research). Myself, I am not sure that we won't eventually have Lojban attitudinals that are NOT translatable to other languages. lojbab -- lojbab lojbab@lojban.org 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