Language and its influence on thought

[sman]

Originally Posted by Pyrotex

This is a really complex and tricky subject. And it's okay if you disagree. No problem.

Actually the problem is that I'm looking for an ally in my own flaming-radical notions of linguistic determinism. But I can't discuss those until the fairy tales are put down. It's not me that disagrees, its the evidence: aphasics, stroke victims, the "wild childeren" who never aquired language during the critical childhood period, certain types of brain damage...all can show signs of language breakdown, and yet cognition can remain unaffected. Mozart, VanGogh - unaffected. These things do not depend on language. I didn't say it, psycholinguistics did.

I'm reading two things between the lines of your posts that concern me: associationism/behaviorism and pre-Chomskyan linguistics.

The behaviorism of B.F. Skinner et al has gone the way of Freud's Id/Ego/Superego and MacLean's Triune Brain. It's just not how the mind works. Not that I (or anyone, really) know everything about how the mind works, but I know that contemporary cognitive science does not rely on these models.

What Noam Chomsky did, in a nutshell, was prove (that's right, prove) that the semantic structures in the brains of 19th century Samoan speakers are exactly the same as the semantic structures in the brains of 19th century English speakers - and every other language. In fact I believe the book is called Universal Syntactic Structures.

I have a feeling that linguistics since Chomsky, and particularly psycholinguistics - the study of human cognition through language - would fascinate you the same way it does me.

Here's a problem - let me know what you think:
I don't believe in a languaging center in the brain. That is, I cant believe that language is produced from a single module of the mind, because I can't reconcile it with the way I understand biological evolution. I'm inclined towards thinking of language as a chimera of cognitive tricks, all evolved separately by their different benefits, commondeered, or co-opted, for a beneficial effect: language. Compare with the way language has co-opted the tongue, larnyx and nasal.

[Pyrotex]

Originally Posted by sman

...Here's a problem - let me know what you think:
I don't believe in a languaging center in the brain. That is, I cant believe that language is produced from a single module of the mind, because I can't reconcile it with the way I understand biological evolution. I'm inclined towards thinking of language as a chimera of cognitive tricks, all evolved separately by their different benefits, commondeered, or co-opted, for a beneficial effect: language. Compare with the way language has co-opted the tongue, larnyx and nasal.

Okay.

I like your last paragraph. I like it a lot. The reason I like it is that I cannot think of any way of refuting it; and it fits precisely with the way Gould, et al, describe the processes of evolution in the development of phenotypic behavior. And I like the way you write. So, I am seriously considering the possibility of agreeing with your last paragraph -- as soon as I work out the immediate consequences.

As for the rest... I dunno.

I will state for the record that what your source referred to as "semantic structure" is not the same as what Korzybski and I mean. [analogy] Your source is referring to the "wetware"; the associations of brain tissue "nodes", their interconnectedness (interfaces) with each other and with the ears and the muscles of speech. I am referring to the "semantic value" (or meaning, an emergent phenomenon) of those associations and interfaces. [/analogy]

[sman]

Originally Posted by Pyrotex

I like your last paragraph....

Well, I'm just talking out of the top of my hat, really. My time is limited - I can build a case with details only if you have patience for me.

For now, I just want you to notice that the "chimera" model is not compatible with cognition arising from language, but is with language from cognition, which I believe is the contemporary scientific position.

[Pyrotex]

Originally Posted by sman

Well, I'm just talking out of the top of my hat, really. My time is limited - I can build a case with details only if you have patience for me....with language from cognition, which I believe is the contemporary scientific position.

That's one bad hat, Harry.

Okay, if you got the time, build your case. So far, I like it.

As for language from cognition, I hold firm to the opposite. Without an emergent structure capable of associating "symbols" with the objects of reality (and with other "symbols"), cognition doesn't have a leg to stand on, so to speak. It is just marginally possible to imagine how a system of "symbols" could arise, and in doing so, create and support a fledgling cognition. But the idea of cognition bootstrapping itself with no underlying "atomic" components just does not (IMHO) work.

Nontheless, lay on McDuff!

[JMJones0424]

Please forgive me, I have been away for a long time and I have a lot of reading to do to get caught up with this thread. But before I do, I would like to make a few points.

Originally Posted by HydrogenBond

Different languages use different structure to express the same thought. For example in English we say the "red apple" and in French we say "la pomme rouge" or the apple red. Both humans see the same thing in the mind or do they?

The English puts the word red first, so this is the first image induced. If we talked very slowly, with the mind working faster, one might extrapolate red into red apple, red dress, red flag, etc., until finally the word apple appears. In French, if we talked slowly, we would get the word apple first. The mind, working faster, would then wonder is this apple red, yellow, green, has a worm, etc., until the word rouge/red appears.

I have two responses to this.

First of all, the example you give is poor, as it is an example of what I think are just trivial differences in grammar. What difference does it make if the adjective or the noun comes first, as they are associated by proximity, and their order does nothing to change the underlying concept they describe.

Second, just because we say red apple, we do not necessarily see the "redness" first, and then see the "appleness". I think (though I may be wrong, but in my experience as a trained observer, I have no reason to doubt this) that humans physically see things in this order- movement, shape, and lastly color. As far as I can tell, most mammals (at least the ones I have hunted) do the same. By your reasoning, we should all say, "stationary (usually omitted), apple, red." Yet that clearly isn't the case.

A better example could again be given by comparing Korean with English. In English, and as far as I know in most other "western" languages, blue and green are considered to be two distinctly different colors. In Korean, they are both given the same name. Now this does not mean that all Koreans are somehow color blind and can not differentiate the difference between blue and green, but rather they see the difference as being unimportant, and if one were to use just a basic set of labels to describe primary colors, they would view blue and green as being two different shades of the same color.

While this doesn't readily seem important, another example can be had through music. The western scale is composed of 7 primary notes that are not consistently spaced throughout the frequency spectrum, yet when we hear a scale being played, it sounds like a natural progression through the frequency range. Other cultures have other scales, and their music sounds discordant to us, just as our music sounds discordant to them. We are hearing the same thing, and yet we get widely different responses, because we have been conditioned to view one scale as pleasing and therefor the other scale sounds unnatural.

Another example is that of the "atom", a word which can be traced back to a Greek concept that everything is composed of fundamental particles that can not be further divided. Through the years, that concept has stuck, and has been the bane of many high school students trying to understand physics and chemistry, for as we all know, atoms are neither indivisible nor are they made up of purely particles. Think of where molecular biology and quantum physics would be if we had not been hamstrung by the concept of everything being made up of tiny billiard balls.

Now, did language CAUSE this misconception? No, obviously not. But I think a clear case can be made that this incorrect "labeling" of the concept perpetuated an incorrect worldview, and made (and still makes) it more difficult to truly understand reality.

[Qfwfq]

Originally Posted by JMJones0424

For instance, if I where to say that "I am going to the store" in Korean, it would be assumed that I was not coming back, where in English, it is obvious. in Korean, I would have to say that "I am going and returning from the store".

I hope it means that there is a single verb which indicates "go-then-return" rather than having to use two verbs every time!

Originally Posted by JMJones0424

I have a hypothesis that language is necessarily abstract, and its learning of expression of abstract thoughts influences not only the expression of those thoughts, but how those thoughts themselves are created and expressed.

Well, I've been bilingual since the age of about 8 and I could say a few things. Unfortunately my opinion about the matter is hard to... put into words.

When I was young and more often regarded as a foreigner, folks would occasionally ask me whether I think in English or Italian. I would always say: "Neither." What I meant is that thought isn't necesarily words, it is concepts. Now, language certainly provides a tool for identifying concepts by attaching a symbol to them. This occurs not only with words however. Mathematical symbols are not phonetic and neither are Chinese ideograms, they can be read without connecting them to any sound, not even "in the head". A symbolic language is a great aid to our ability of thinking and so of course it helps to shape our thoughts; without it we would still have direct sensory samples of the most concrete things but no symbol for 'honesty' or 'crime' unless we somewhat arbitrarily associate these ideas with some figment of our imagination.

I have often pondered on the relation of thought and language and one thing is sure in my opinion, we could never really think by simply manipulating words. The process starts much more "down in there" but we have a degree of need to translate it into words, somewhat like "so we know what we've thought" but it is somewhat automatic, largely out of habit IMHO and this doesn't quite necessarily occur in the case of some folks including myself.

Chinese people have told me they can read written Chinese without even mentally pronouncing the ideograms and understand them exactly, as much as one might laugh at a wordless humorous picture by just getting the ideas it suggests. The same folks also told me that each ideogram is composed of marks that each stand for an idea. However, in reading aloud only the complete ideagram is associated with a syllable, The ideaograms are exactly the same throughout China but the spoken syllables change from place to place.

[JMJones0424]

Originally Posted by Qfwfq

I hope it means that there is a single verb which indicates "go-then-return" rather than having to use two verbs every time!

In Korean "I am going to the store", the verb is a conjugation of a combination of both of the verbs "to go" and "to come". Korean conjugation is done for tense and intention, not for subject/verb agreement.

The ideaograms are exactly the same throughout China but the spoken syllables change from place to place

I understand this to be correct, and furthermore, it applies to most other eastern Asian languages in the vicinity of China. In fact, it is hard to read a Japanese newspaper without knowing a basic number of Chinese symbols. Chinese could be considered linguistically equivalent to Latin in the regions that China has had historical influence. Koreans did not even have a written language until about the 15th century, scholars had to learn Chinese in order to read and write. As part of the agenda of isolation in DPRK, nearly seventy percent of the nouns and verbs in use prior to the splitting of the country had to be renamed in order to purge sino influence on Korean. For a sino noun, one must use a sino counter, and pure Korean requires a Korean counter. Mixing the two sometimes ends up in embarrassing moments. But this is just a digression from my original observation.

The time I am able to devote to reading in the disciplines of linguistics is limited, as I have higher priority interests, but the little I have read of Chomsky and contemporaries sometimes doesn't quite sit well with what I have experienced. I tend to agree with Pyrotex's post above. While the need for symbols to label abstract thoughts internally may be debatable, I think it is obvious that symbols are needed to communicate those thoughts to others. And perhaps once you have become "fluent" in those symbols, you no longer need to associate the symbol with that which it describes when thinking, but when first learning the concept, it was necessary (wasn't it?). Something akin to the process you go through when learning a second language, when translation finally gives way to expression directly in the second language.

Then again, children readily learn two languages just as easily as they learn one. But I think enough research has been done to at least strongly suggest that this is a function of the biological condition of the child's brain as opposed to the adult brain.

I don't know, I really have nothing more than anecdotal tales to offer to this thread, but I greatly appreciate the discussion taking place

[JMJones0424]

It appears that in at least one of my examples, I may be placing too much emphasis on the process of labeling concepts. I gave the example of how Koreans use the same primary color name for both green and blue. According to this abstract from Cognition vol 112 issue 3 (Sep 2009)

Categorical perception (CP) is said to occur when a continuum of equally spaced physical changes is perceived as unequally spaced as a function of category membership (Harnad, S. (Ed.) (1987). Psychophysical and cognitive aspects of categorical perception: A critical overview. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). A common suggestion is that CP for color arises because perception is qualitatively distorted when we learn to categorize a dimension. Contrary to this view, we here report that English speakers show no evidence of lowered discrimination thresholds at the boundaries between blue and green categories even though CP is found at these boundaries in a supra-threshold task. Furthermore, there is no evidence of different discrimination thresholds between individuals from two language groups (English and Korean) who use different color terminology in the blue–green region and have different supra-threshold boundaries. Our participants’ just noticeable difference (JND) thresholds suggest that they retain a smooth continuum of perceptual space that is not warped by stretching at category boundaries or by within-category compression. At least for the domain of color, categorical perception appears to be a categorical, but not a perceptual phenomenon.