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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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 Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 9:41 am Post subject: Sapir�Whorf hypothesis |
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| What do you think? Any good examples from real life that seem to back it up quite well? |
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Keepongoing
Joined: 13 Feb 2003
Location: Korea
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| Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 2:20 pm Post subject: yes |
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| I think there are many examples that one's culture is embedded in language. The Chinese have many words for rice, whereas in English there is one that I know of. The Eskimos have many words for snow. In Asian cultures more words are assigned to relationships based on age and if matriarchal or patriarchal. How you address people is a huge factor as well. |
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Woland
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 2:51 pm Post subject: Re: yes |
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| Keepongoing wrote: |
| I think there are many examples that one's culture is embedded in language. The Chinese have many words for rice, whereas in English there is one that I know of. The Eskimos have many words for snow. In Asian cultures more words are assigned to relationships based on age and if matriarchal or patriarchal. How you address people is a huge factor as well. |
From Geoffrey Pullum's fantastically funny, but completely accurate essay, The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax:
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What I do here is very little more than an extended review and elaboration on Laura Martin's wonderful American Anthropologist report of
1986. Laura Martin is professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at the Cleveland State University. She endures calmly the fact that virtually no one listened to her when she first published.
It may be that few will listen to me as I explain in different words to another audience what she pointed out. But the truth is that the Eskimos do not have lots of different words for snow, and no one who knows anything about Eskimo (or more accurately, about the lnuit and Yupik families of related languages spoken by Eskimos from Siberia to Greenland) has ever said they do. Anyone who insists on simply checking their primary sources will find that they are quite unable to document the
alleged facts about snow vocabulary (but nobody ever checks, because
the truth might not be what the reading public wants to hear). |
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Some time in the future, and it may be soon, you will be told by someone that the Eskimos have many or dozens or scores or hundreds of words for snow. You, gentle reader, must decide here and now whether you are going to let them get away with it, or whether you are going to be true to your position as an Expert On Language by calling them on it.
The last time it happened to me (other than through the medium of print) was in July 1988 at the University of California's Irvine campus, where I was attending the university's annual Management Institute. Not just one lecturer at the Institute but two of them somehow (don't ask me how) worked the Eskimological falsehood into their tedious presentations on management psychology and administrative problem-solving. The first time I attempted to demur and was glared at by lecturer and classmates alike; the second time, discretion for once getting the upper hand over valor, I just held my face in my hands for a minute, then quietly closed my binder and crept out of the room.
Don't be a coward like me. Stand up and tell the speaker this: C. W. Schultz-Lorentzen's Dictionary of the West Greenlandic Eskimo Language (1927) gives just two possibly relevant roots: qanik, meaning 'snow in the air' or 'snowflake', and aput, meaning 'snow on the ground'. Then add that you would be interested to know if thespeaker can cite any more.
This will not make you the most popular person in the room. It will have an effect roughly comparable to pouring fifty gallons of thick oatmeal into a harpsichord during a baroque recital. But it will strike a blow for truth, responsibility and standards of evidence in linguistics. |
Go here for the .pdf file:
users.utu.fi/freder/Pullum-Eskimo-VocabHoax.pdf
The article, one of a series of columns Pullum wrote for the end pages of Natural Language and Linguistic Theory (and thebest linguistics humor extant), gives Whorf his due, but trashes his work in this area.
As for me, weak versions of Sapir-Whorf seem to have some support (sorry, no examples this early in the day), but the strong version is nonsense. |
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SuperHero
Joined: 10 Dec 2003
Location: Superhero Hideout
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| Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 4:22 pm Post subject: Re: yes |
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| Woland wrote: |
| From Geoffrey Pullum's fantastically funny, but completely accurate essay, The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax: |
Also be sure to read The Language Log of which pullman is one of the regular contributors. Lots of stuff on there about eskimos and snow and other vocabulary fairy tales. |
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paquebot
Joined: 20 Jun 2007
Location: Northern Gyeonggi-do
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| Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 5:15 pm Post subject: |
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[quote="Woland"]
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| Don't be a coward like me. Stand up and tell the speaker this: C. W. Schultz-Lorentzen's Dictionary of the West Greenlandic Eskimo Language (1927) gives just two possibly relevant roots: qanik, meaning 'snow in the air' or 'snowflake', and aput, meaning 'snow on the ground'. Then add that you would be interested to know if thespeaker can cite any more. |
While I agree with you concerning the misinformed view that the Inuit, Yupik, and Aleutian languages have more 'words' (in this case, lexical categories) for snow than is actually the case, I also have to question the cited author's reference of "two possibly relevant roots". A root is not the same as a word; to use the two interchangably seems like a rather sly way to make a point. Especially given that the Eskimo-Aleut languages are agglutinative polysynthetic languages. (The point being that the Eskimo-Aleut languages may only have two roots for snow but they certainly have more than two words to describe various categories of snow)
The qualities of snow are more important to the average Inuit, Yupik, or Aleut than to the average Anglophone. At the very least they would likely be more observant of the differences in snow types. Using adjectives and adverbs would probably result in a similarly sized lexicon between the Eskimo-Aleut and English languages; however, the agglutinating properties of Eskimo-Aleut languages suggests that they would have more 'words' ('roots plus affixes' as opposed to 'main word plus modifying words').
For a brief discussion and list of lexemes check out: Counting Eskimo words for snow: A citizen's guide by Anthony C. Woodbury (online at http://www.princeton.edu/~browning/snow.html)
For fun, there's an online dictionary located at: http://www.alaskool.org/language/dictionaries/inupiaq/dictionary.htm
(Originally from: I�upiat Eskimo Dictionary, Donald H. Webster and Wilfried Zibell, Illustrated by Thelma A. Webster, Summer Institute of Linguistics, Inc., Fairbanks, Alaska, 1970) |
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robot
Joined: 07 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 5:49 pm Post subject: |
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The other reason this is a myth is because English has perhaps even more words for snow than do Inuit languages: sleet, slush, flurry, drift, hail, etc...
How about Sapir-Whorf as it relates to Korean? |
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Woland
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 6:45 pm Post subject: Re: yes |
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| SuperHero wrote: |
| Also be sure to read The Language Log of which pullum is one of the regular contributors. Lots of stuff on there about eskimos and snow and other vocabulary fairy tales. |
Best blog I know of.
**********
This probably hasn't gone the way you planned, Mith. Sorry. I'll try to fix some of that now. First, by sending people to the wiki page so that they can take a look at the claims and some of the lit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis
Next, by lifting the key texts from there and quoting them here:
Sapir wrote:
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| Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached... We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation. (Sapir, 1958 [1929], p. 69) |
Whorf wrote:
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| We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds�and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way - an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of course, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees. (Whorf, 1940, pp. 213�14) |
If we take these to mean that language mediates thought (which is what is called the 'weak' version), it is actually pretty unremarkable. The idea is a staple of Vygotskian psychology, which developed independently around the same time, and is pretty much a common place today.
***********
And now back to the diversion. More wiki on Eskimo words for snow, which neatly merges Paquebot's and Pullum's thinking:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow
And links to a page about a new linguistic category derived from the misuse of the claim, the 'snowclone':
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowclone
Which takes us back to Pullum and that great blog. |
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Keepongoing
Joined: 13 Feb 2003
Location: Korea
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| Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2007 1:13 am Post subject: snow |
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Eskimo Snow Lexemes
A. Snow particles
(1) Snowflake
qanuk 'snowflake'
qanir- 'to snow'
qanunge- 'to snow' [NUN]
qanugglir- 'to snow' [NUN]
(2) Frost
kaneq 'frost'
kaner- 'be frosty/frost sth.'
(3) Fine snow/rain particles
kanevvluk 'fine snow/rain particles
kanevcir- to get fine snow/rain particles
(4) Drifting particles
natquik 'drifting snow/etc'
natqu(v)igte- 'for snow/etc. to drift along ground'
(5) Clinging particles
nevluk 'clinging debris/
nevlugte- 'have clinging debris/...'lint/snow/dirt...'
B. Fallen snow
(6) Fallen snow on the ground
aniu [NS] 'snow on ground'
aniu- [NS] 'get snow on ground'
apun [NS] 'snow on ground'
qanikcaq 'snow on ground'
qanikcir- 'get snow on ground'
(7) Soft, deep fallen snow on the ground
muruaneq 'soft deep snow'
( Crust on fallen snow
qetrar- [NSU] 'for snow to crust'
qerretrar- [NSU] 'for snow to crust'
(9) Fresh fallen snow on the ground
nutaryuk 'fresh snow' [HBC]
(10) Fallen snow floating on water
qanisqineq 'snow floating on water'
C. Snow formations
(11) Snow bank
qengaruk 'snow bank' [Y, HBC]
(12) Snow block
utvak 'snow carved in block'
(13) Snow cornic | | |
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