Linguistic Relativity Principle

Last session we've talked about the so called linguistic relativism.

That's theory by Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf who claimed that there is a systematic relatiship between the grammatical categories of the language a person speaks and how that person both understands the world and behaves in it, for instance the structure of a speaker's mother tongue influences the way his mind perceives the world.

difference in vocabulary -> difference in attitude or perception

During the studies of psycholinguistics everybody comes across the example of the Inuits who have about a hundred words for snow. Have a look at this link, which lists up the different words.

Moreover if you want to hear the Inuit language go here
(it's funny and the theory becomes a bit more interesting!)

Other examples which support this hypothesis are differences in the perception of spatial relations, for instance the most language have the spatial terms left - right and North - South. There are languages, however which do not use left - right, but only North - South, like Guugu Yimithir.

Other examples are presented in the texts
The Power of Language
or
Sapir-Whorf and what to tell students these days

Whorf is a pure determist and at first sight the examples seem to be logical, however there are even scientists who deny the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. One of them is Geoffrey K. Pullum.
In a blog Pullum himself posts the reason why the hypothesis cannot be true. He has written the essay The Great Eskimo Hoax and wants to clary that the hundred words for snow are is just a myth.

"The story about Inuit (or Inuktitut, or Yup'ik, or more generally, Eskimo) words for snow is completely wrong. People say that speakers of these languages have 23, or 42, or 50, or 100 words for snow --- the numbers often seem to have been picked at random. The spread of the myth was tracked in a paper by Laura Martin (American Anthropologist 88 (1986), 418-423), and publicized more widely by a later humorous embroidering of the theme by G. K. Pullum (reprinted as chapter 19 of his 1991 book of essays The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax). But the Eskimoan language group uses an extraordinary system of multiple, recursively addable derivational suffixes for word formation called postbases. The list of snow-referring roots to stick them on isn't that long: qani- for a snowflake, api- for snow considered as stuff lying on the ground and covering things up, a root meaning "slush", a root meaning "blizzard", a root meaning "drift", and a few others -- very roughly the same number of roots as in English. Nonetheless, the number of distinct words you can derive from them is not 50, or 150, or 1500, or a million, but simply unbounded. Only stamina sets a limit.

That does not mean there are huge numbers of unrelated basic terms for huge numbers of finely differentiated snow types. It means that the notion of fixing a number of snow words, or even a definition of what a word for snow would be, is meaningless for these languages. You could write down not just thousands but millions of words built from roots that refer to snow if you had the time. But they would all be derivatives of a fairly small number of roots. And you could write down just as many derivatives of any other root: fish, or coffee, or excrement."

I' ve cited the first part of Pullum's argumentation, but I highly recommend a further reading, so go on this blog and read more. If you are lazy then at least watch this video I found on youtube, which summarises Pullum's thought.

My opinion to the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis:

I don't think that language determines your thoughts completely, but rather influences it. For instance the mass media and advertisements always uses a subtle language in order to influence the readers' and consumers' thoughts. One example is the euphemism freedom fighter instead of terrorist.

It's on the tip of my tongue!

Everybody knows the situation which is presented in the comics:

tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon.

What is the tip-of-the tongue phenomenon?

The tip-of-the-tongue phenomen is characterized by being able to retrieve quite a lot of information about the target word without being able to retrieve the word itself.

You know the meaning of the word. You may know how many syllables the word has, or its initial sound or letter. But you can’t retrieve it all. This experience is coupled with a strong feeling (this is the frustrating part) that you know the word, and that it is somehow kept in your brains. When you eventually remember it, the experience is often as erratic and abrupt as the initial failure — typically it pops up later when you don not need it anymore!

Often a similar sounding word seems to block your the word which is on the tip of your tongue.

The tip-of-the tongue phenomenon probably occurs, because of a weaker connection between the meaning a word its phonetical realisation (the sound)

If you are interested in this phenomeno go on tip of the tongue: web extra have a look at the videos. Pedestrians are supposed to answer questions which at first sight seem to be easy, but these questions elicit the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon. It's quite funny.

More over there is a questionaire with 25 various question. Go to the members of your family and try to do the experiment! Unfortunately you have to translate the questions into German, because the phenomenon would occur in a more intensified degree, if the speaker had to answer the questions in a L2.