Through the language glass
(my/paste-org-roam-node "through" :no-links t)
Prologue
- Cultural differences are reflected in language in profound ways, and a growing body of reliable scientific research provides solid evidence that our mother tongue can affect how we think and how we perceive the world
- Culture is all human traits that are not the result of instinct
- Nurture as opposed to nature
Part I
- Gladstone, 1858, "Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age"
- Homer and his contemporaries perceived the world in something
closer to black and white than to full Technicolor
- "wine-dark sea"
- Gladstone arguments
- The use of the same work to denote colours which, according to us, are essentially different
- THe description of the same object under epithets of colour fundamentally disagreeing one from the other
- The slight use of colour, and its absence in certain cases where we might confidently expect it
- The vast predominance of the most crude and elemental forms of colour, black and white, over every other
- The small size of Homer's colour vocabulary
- One cardical error
- presuppositions about the relation between language and perception
- Homer and his contemporaries perceived the world in something
closer to black and white than to full Technicolor
- Geiger, 1867, "On the Colour Sense in primitive times and its Evolution"
- Perception of colour increased "according to the schema of the
colour spectrum"
- This development seems to have occurred in exactly the same
order in different cultures all over the world
- Red -> Yellow -> Green -> Blue and violet
- This development seems to have occurred in exactly the same
order in different cultures all over the world
- Perception of colour increased "according to the schema of the
colour spectrum"
- Magnus, 1877, "On the Historical Evolution of the Colour Sense"
- The perception of the ancients was similar to what moderns eyes
can see at twilight
- The opinion of Magnus's critics: since vision could not have changed, the only explanation must be that the deficiencies in ancient colour descriptions were due to "imperfections" in the languages themselves
- The perception of the ancients was similar to what moderns eyes
can see at twilight
- Rivers, 1900
- Expedition on Murray Island
- Descriptions of colours by the local population is generally
vague and indefinite
- The most definite names were for black, white and red
- Descriptions of colours by the local population is generally
vague and indefinite
- Expedition on Murray Island
- Berlin & Kay, 1969, "Basic Color Terms"
- Two major findings
- Colour terms are not so arbitrary
- Languages acquire the names for colours in a predictable order
- Some ways of dividing the spectrum are still far more natural
than others
- Almost confirm Geiger's and Magnus' colour order
- But they do not provide an actual explanation
- Almost confirm Geiger's and Magnus' colour order
- Colour terms are not so arbitrary
- Claims watered down in the following years
- Two major findings
- Complexity of language
- A universal constant, reflecting the nature of the human race (as linguists say)
- or, a variable that reflects the speakers' culture and society?
- The claim "All languages are equally complex"
- for example, in "Introduction to language" by Victoria Fromkin
and Robert Rodman (1974)
- "All languages are equally complex"
- but there is no idea about how to measure the complexity of a language
- in "A Course in Modern Linguistics" (Charles Hockett, 1958)
the author draws a distinction that I think it's interesting
if applied to Programming Languages
- "[…] since all languages have about equally complex jobs to do, […] what is not done morphologically has to be done syntactically.
- A lot of complexity (but still, how we measure it? is it possible?) is merely excess baggage that languages accumulate over the centuries
- It's possible to measure complexity in certain areas, though
- For example vocabulary
- First dividing line is between languages of illiterate
societies and those with a writter tradition
- In illiterate societies there is no "passive vocabulary" 1
- First dividing line is between languages of illiterate
societies and those with a writter tradition
- Morphology
- Revere Perkins' experiment (1992)
- There is an inverse correlation between the complexity
of a society and the complexity of the language it uses
- Plausible answers go back to one basic factor: the
difference between communication among intimates and
among strangers.
- Communicating with intimates about things that are close at hand, you can be more concise (common frame)
- Pressure for simplification in larger societies
- Contact with different languages
- Contacts with variations of the same language
- Literacy
- This very same notion is also mentioned in From Bacteria to Bach and Back 2
- Plausible answers go back to one basic factor: the
difference between communication among intimates and
among strangers.
- There is an inverse correlation between the complexity
of a society and the complexity of the language it uses
- Revere Perkins' experiment (1992)
- Sound system
- Direct correlation between the number of speakers and the
size of the sound inventory
- As opposed to word structure, it's not uncommon that a language's sound inventory increases due to contact with other languages
- Direct correlation between the number of speakers and the
size of the sound inventory
- Subordination
- Lack of shared background and knowledge in large societies leads to more occasions where complex information has to be conveyed
- For example vocabulary
- for example, in "Introduction to language" by Victoria Fromkin
and Robert Rodman (1974)
Part II
- Sapir & Whorf: Linguistic relativity
- Boas & Jakobson
- Boas, 1938
- 'grammar performs another function. It determines those aspects of each experience that must be expressed"
- Jakobson
- "Languages differ essentially in what they must convey anot in what the may convey"
- Boas, 1938
Footnotes:
1
Also on language and societies, this interview with Alan Kay
Putting a writing system into an oral society doesn’t actually do it, doesn’t change them. It requires something more, because the thing that’s important about writing and how it changes the thinking of the civilization is the literate aspects of it, the structure and the thought, in various ways. Anyway, so this is all stuff that’s water over the dam, but most people don’t understand it. Most people in media don’t understand it.
2
More precisely, it is a quote from James Hurford's "The Origins of Language":
Contact between adults speaking different languages tends to produce varieties of language in which morphological complexity is stripped out [p.148]