Language and Ontology: Linguistic Relativism (Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis) vs. Universal Grammar Universal Ontology vs. Ontological Relativity Semiotics and Ontology: Annotated Bibliography of John Deely. First part: 1965-1998 Annotated Bibliography of John Deely. Second part: 1999-2010 The Rediscovery of John Poinsot (John of St. Thomas).

Le présent article traite des origines de la théorie de la catégorisation, telle qu’elle fut élaborée par Eleanor Rosch dans les années 1970. Il est divisé en deux parties. La première est consacrée au contexte théorique dans lequel les recherches initiales de Rosch ont pris place. Pour bien comprendre ce contexte, il convient de remonter aux recherches de Lenneberg et de ses coauteurs sur le principe de relativité de Whorf. On retracera ainsi le cheminement qui mena de ce principe (...) jusqu’à sa reformulation comme hypothèse empiriquement testable, en partant des études sur la catégorisation des couleurs (menées à l’université de Harvard) pour en arriver à la publication de l’ouvrage de Berlin et Kay sur les termes de couleurs de base. Pour des raisons que nous tenterons d’expliciter, au relativisme initial se substitua une forme d’universalisme auquel le livre de Berlin et Kay apporta une contribution non négligeable. La seconde partie narre le développement de la théorie de Rosch au sein de ce contexte universaliste. En étendant progressivement sa théorie au-delà de ses objets initiaux (les couleurs et les formes spatiales) pour embrasser les catégories dites “sémantiques”, Rosch évolua d’une conception “analogique” ou gestaltiste de la catégorie vers une analyse en termes d’attributs discrets. Son concept de prototype incorporait initialement des traits qui venaient de la Gestalttheorie et de la notion de schéma (telle qu’elle avait été opérationnalisée en psychologie après Bartlett), pour devenir ensuite plus complexe. Tout au long de cette évolution, elle conserva une approche réaliste de la catégorie, entendue comme un agrégat “naturel” de propriétés. Pour étayer son réalisme, elle recourut à des outils théoriques forgés avant elle par Egon Brunswik (à qui elle est redevable de son index de validité de l’indice) et par Garner, à qui elle a emprunté la notion de structurelle corrélationnelle, notion issue d’une théorie informationnelle de la catégorisation. Quant à sa conception des niveaux de catégorisation, et notamment du “niveau de base”, elle doit beaucoup aux travaux de Brent Berlin sur les taxinomies populaires. Il est possible aussi que Rosch ait subi l’influence de Roger Brown, du moins en ce qui concerne les schémas d’action associés à des objets. Ainsi, la théorie de Rosch constitue un “patchwork conceptuel” qui a acquis cohérence et unité en intégrant des éléments d’origines variées. (shrink)

According to the so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, a language influences the mind of its user. This is more or less trivial, but the problems are in the details. It is difficult to make precise what those influences are, be it in general philosophical or in particular empirical-cultural terms. I will give an account of what I take to be basic aesthetic and grammatical features of the Chinese language compared with what we find in Western languages such as Latin (...) or greek. Then I will indicate what I take to be cultural differences and discuss whether these might be the result of differences in language structure. (shrink)

Evidencia reciente ha revitalizado el interés en los llamados “efectos Whorf” en la percepción, dando lugar a nuevas explicaciones de sus alcances y mecanismos subyacentes. En este trabajo propongo que pueden distinguirse dos tipos de propuestas: autores como Lupyan (2012) explican estos efectos postulando mecanismos específicamente dedicados a producirlos, mientras que autores como Casasanto (2008) atribuyen tales efectos al funcionamiento de procesos generales, como los de aprendizaje asociativo. Luego, muestro cómo el enfoque grounded acerca de los conceptos en ciencias (...) cognitivas (e.g. Barsalou 1999, 2016) podría resultar pertinente para el estudio de los efectos Whorf en lingüística, antropología, filosofía y psicología cognitiva. En particular, defenderé que la evidencia ofrecida en favor de este enfoque favorece explicaciones de mecanismo general como la de Casasanto (2008), por encima de propuestas de mecanismo específico como la de Lupyan (2012). (shrink)

This is an essay about language, thought, and culture in general, and about Ancient Greek and Classical Chinese in particular. It is about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which says that language influences the mind, and applies this hypothesis to Greek and Chinese. It is also an essay in comparative philosophy as well as a contribution to the history of ideas. From the language side, I rely on the nineteenth-century German linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, and from the culture (...) side on the contemporary French sinologist François Jullien. Combining their ideas, I give substance to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and explain some of Jullien's claims about the historical and political developments of Chinese culture. The central .. (shrink)

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis asserts that people who organize their experience with the help of different languages can have different pictures of the world.

This chapter contains sections titled: The Philosophical Tale.

This paper aims to connect two debates about the relation among language, reasoning and thought that belong to different theoretical and disciplinary fields, but that are closely linked. On the one hand, the philosophical debate about logical pluralism. And, on the other hand, the linguistic debate around the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. We propose a hypothesis compatible with a version of logical pluralism and linguistic relativism that makes it possible to explain the differences between thoughts expressed in different (...) languages. This hypothesis, at the same time, supports the possibility of understanding and even translating different logical and linguistic variants. From a position akin to logical expressivism, we claim that there exists a proto-logic underlying all natural languages. The minimal logical operators proper of this proto-logic can be made explicit in a precise way in different formal systems. This gives rise to logical pluralism. We also offered an empirically informed philosophical argument in favor of this hypothesis. (shrink)

Examining the sapir-Whorf hypothesis, The author addresses the questions whether language affects perception and whether grammatical categories affect conceptual categories. He argues that advocates of linguistic relativity have attributed to language an unjustified degree of causal efficacy and that linguistic idealism is contradicted by the results of experimental psychology. Then, Considering the claimed correlation between grammatical and conceptual categories, He argues that grammar has no metaphysics and does not influence thought. The author concludes that language in use (...) embodies a point of view only in the weak sense that relations and distinctions implicit in necessary concepts constitute a philosophical theory about reality. (staff). (shrink)

According to a thesis I call thelinguistic assumption, the structure of language is a guide to the fundamental nature of reality. It is deployed in the metaphysical debate over the nature of time. In that debate, it is more radical than the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, and should be rejected. A weak interpretation of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis makes the empirical claim that speakers of different languages experience, perceive, or think about aspects of the world differently. I (...) survey recent experimental evidence that supports this hypothesis which, I argue, gives us further reason to reject the linguistic assumption. (shrink)

Language and Ontology: Linguistic Relativism (Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis) vs. Universal Grammar Universal Ontology vs. Ontological Relativity Semiotics and Ontology: The Rediscovery of John Poinsot (John of St. Thomas) Annotated Bibliography of John Deely. First part: 1965-1998 Annotated Bibliography of John Deely. Second part: 1999-2010..

By the beginning of the twenty-first century essentialism is giving way to the constructivist paradigm in the field of social sciences and humanities. However, linguistic essentialism survived all the shocks and received a classical form in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativism. The application of this hypothesis to the analysis of linguistic communities puts majority and minority languages in different positions: it makes strong languages even stronger, and simply kills small ones. The task of preserving minority (...) languages in programs built using this methodology turns out to be impossible. In our humble opinion, two research paradigms are more adequate for the purpose. One of them is associated with the pragmatic turn in the analytical philosophy of language and represents a transition from the analysis of the structure of the language itself to the analysis of the conditions of communication, taking into account all the sociocultural components of this process. The second methodology is Erving Goff man’s concept of social face and performative behavior. (shrink)

This paper attempts an investigation to the relationship between the Analects by Confucius (the Lun-Yu), which contains the very core of the philosophy of Confucius and the Chinese language in terms of describing the degree to which the structure of the Chinese language has been beneficial for the evolution of philosophical thought. The idea investigated has its root to the individuality of the Chinese language, which is differently structured compared to the Indo-European languages. Therefore we set to explore how it (...) became possible for this particularity to give birth to original philosophical ideas and thus some comparison examples are used to the Greek language. In other words may we assume that the way one speaks defines the way one thinks according to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? (shrink)

The 2016 much acclaimed American sci-fi movie Arrival is based on the so-called “Sapir-Whorf” hypothesis, a linguistic theory set forth in the first half of the 20th century, according to which one’s native language dictates the way in which one perceives reality. By taking into account the latest in human knowledge, this paper tries to provide arguments as to why such a claim works wonderfully in fiction, but not in science.

According to the weak version of linguistic relativity, also called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the features of an individual’s native language influence his worldview and perception. We decided to test this hypothesis on the sufficient conditional and the necessary conditional, expressed differently in Chinese and French. In Chinese, connectors for both conditionals exist and are used in everyday life, while there is only a connector for the sufficient conditional in French. A first hypothesis follows from linguistic (...) relativity: for the necessary conditional, better logic performance is expected in Chinese participants rather than French participants. As a second hypothesis, for all participants, we expect performance on the sufficient conditional to be better than on the necessary conditional. Indeed, despite the isomorphism of the two conditionals, they differ in how information is processed for reasoning. We decided to study reasoning under uncertainty as it reflects reality more accurately. To do so, we analyzed the coherence of participants using de Finetti’s theory for deduction under uncertainty. The results of our study show no significant difference in performance between Chinese and French participants, neither on the sufficient conditional nor on the necessary conditional. Thus, our first hypothesis derived from the weak version of linguistic relativity is not confirmed. In contrast, our results confirm the second hypothesis in two out of three inference schemas. (shrink)

Having remarked that "competing and mutually contradictory philosophies may be formulated in different languages," Landesman concludes that "the generalization that the speaking of a given language by a given philosopher is either a necessary or sufficient condition for the formulation of his explicit philosophy would seem to be false." I do not believe that the conclusion follows. Elsewhere, I have tried to show that what I call the "strong interpretation" of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis can be assimilated to (...) the notion of "untranslatability" in such a way that it becomes equivalent to the denial of the position held by Roman Jakobson that "All cognitive experience and its classification is conveyable in any existing language." To deny Jakobson's thesis is equivalent to the assertion that there is at least one language for which there is at least one other language such that the first cannot translate the second. Letting "Txy" stand for "x translates y," and "Lx" for "x is a language," Jakobson's thesis goes over in symbols as. (shrink)

RESUMEN Este trabajo pretende relacionar dos debates emparentados sobre cómo la lógica y el lenguaje influyen sobre el pensamiento. Existe un eje de discusión en relación a si hay una pluralidad de lógicas o un único sistema lógico como criterio de evaluación para cualquier contexto de razonamiento. En lingüística, el debate surgido a partir de las interpretaciones fuertes y débiles de la hipótesis Sapir-Whorf ha centralizado la discusión en torno al grado de influencia o determinación del lenguaje sobre (...) el pensamiento. Desde perspectivas y marcos teórico-conceptuales diferentes, lógica y lingüística delimitan y problematizan un campo de indagación y reflexión. El artículo, desde una mirada transdisciplinar, pretende dar cuenta y postular vasos comunicantes entre estos debates atendiendo a los matices de cada enfoque, así como proponer una hipótesis propia sobre la problemática planteada. ABSTRACT This paper aims to relate two debates about how logic and language influence thought. There is an axis of discussion about whether there exists a plurality of logic or a single logical system as an evaluation criterion for any reasoning context. In linguistics, the debate arising from the strong and weak interpretations of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has centralized the discussion around the degree of influence or determination of language on thought. From different perspectives and theoretical-conceptual frameworks, logic, and linguistics delimit and problematize a field of inquiry and reflection. The article, from a transdisciplinary perspective, intends to account for and postulate communicating vessels between these debates, considering the nuances of each approach. It also seeks to propose its own hypothesis on the problem raised. (shrink)

The article responds to the critical review by P. Kusliy [Kusliy, 2023] of my latest book [Smirnov, 2021]. In order to show the false and unscientific nature of my position, P. Kusliy puts forward three basic theses: I proceed from the Sapir – Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity; I assert that the Arabic literary language (ALA) lacks a copula; ALA has no native speakers in the modern world, which means that ALA is not relevant for discussing the (...) relationship between language and thought. Those three theses of P. Kusliy are fake assersions having zero correspondence in my theoretical texts and language situation in the Arab-speaking world, therefore his statements cannot be considered as justified at least to some extent and serving to eliminate the shortcomings of my theoretical position. I argue that a single metalanguage is impossible for European languages and ALA: their analysis and description should be done in two different (meta)languages having diverse logical basis and content and therefore directly untranslatable into each other. The inadequacy of P. Kusliy’s interpretation of my position is caused by his non-reflective acceptance of the collective cognitive unconscious of the European big culture as having no alternative and, consequently, as universal. (shrink)

In this essay I closely look at dialogues from the Daoist text Zhuangzi and examine their modes of reasoning. The observations, comments, and dialogues are often witty, surprising, and puzzling. Sometimes they are mystic and difficult to understand. But how “reasonable” are the answers given in these dialogues? I will focus on a dialogue from chapter 17, called “Autumn Floods.” I will closely follow and analyze the arguments and their twists. In particular, I will question the use of the word (...) “Dao.” I will also place this analysis in broader comparative frameworks regarding rationality, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and Western traditions. (shrink)

A variety of commentators have explored the similarities between pragmatism and Thomas Reid’s Philosophy of Common Sense. Peirce himself claims his version of pragmatism either (loosely) is, or entails, a Critical Common-sensism, a blend of what is best in Kant and Reid. In this paper I argue for a neglected aspect of the relation between Peirce and Reid, and of each to common sense: linguistics. First, I summarize Peirce’s account of what distinguishes his common-sensism from Reid’s. Second, I argue for (...) the importance of appeals to linguistic universals by Reid as both a source for identifying common sense beliefs, and a basis for justifying them. While Peirce is occasionally tempted by such appeals, overall he is critical of appeals to language, especially as most Western philosophers have been familiar with a small set of (Indo-)European languages; say, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, and Latin. This leads to the third section, which concerns Peirce’s familiarity with major nineteenth century linguists, and his contention that the ‘peculiarity’ of Western European languages has impeded the development of logic and philosophy. In particular, I look at unpublished manuscripts where Peirce summarizes his own study of non-European languages, ranging from Arabic, to Ngarrindjeri, to Xhosa. Peirce was only an amateur linguist, and also aware of the challenges of doing cross-cultural linguistics through comparative grammar; e.g., the temptation to force unfamiliar languages onto the “Procrustean Bed of Aryan grammar” (CP 2.211). Nonetheless, this study left him suspicious of any claims of linguistic universals, and supported his anti-psychologism. That is, not only should logic and philosophy not be based upon psychology (at least as a special science), they should also be independent of linguistics. However, Peirce also advances something like the so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that language determines, or at least conditions, thought. The question now becomes what is the nature of a philosophy of common sense, even a critical one, without a common language, or possibly no commonalities across languages? (shrink)

In this article, we examine the key ideas of Wilhelm von Humboldt about language and their relevance to the contemporary research in the field of linguistics. In his works, N. Chomsky describes Humboldt as a key predecessor of the generative approach. The authors discuss the concrete aspects of Humboldt’s influence on generative linguistics drawing special attention to his notion of Form. The authors also observe that Humboldt’s works also contain statements about the deep differences that exist between different languages, as (...) well as statements that different languages can form different pictures of the world. These ideas resonate with philosophical ideas about linguistic relativity (the famous Sapir – Whorf hypothesis), which are incompatible with generative linguistics. The authors try to reconcile an apparent contradiction by appealing to two different perspectives on language that they call the dynamic and the static one. They provide arguments in favor of the former and explore existing arguments against the later, which is associated with the aforementioned hypothesis. The authors conclude by pointing out that Humboldt’s legacy has so many facets that it introduces to incompatible views on language each of which had a serious impact on the studies of language in the 20th century. (shrink)

This article addresses the issue of asking questions as an important element of international business negotiation where there are differences in cultural background. A Dutch-Spanish difference in questioning was related to differences between the two parties in uncertainty reduction and negotiation goals. All 480 questions in 8 simulated Kelley game negotiations were reviewed: both monocultural and intercultural, i.e. 2 cultures and 3 languages. This analysis may also allow an illustration of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis which holds, at least (...) in its weak version, that culture frames language and language frames culture. It may also be possible to determine the extent to which intercultural differences between Dutch and Spanish questioning behaviours - assuming they can be ascertained in comparison with monocultural Dutch and Spanish behaviour - are language bound. In other words, do negotiators use a different typology of questions in their native language than in a neutral language? A comparison of the monocultural and intercultural data makes it possible to illustrate the above hypothesis, and to establish how far the L1-culture connection differs from that of the L2-culture. For another similar test on culture-language relations in South African mathematics texts and their readers, see Prins and Ulijn. The uncertainty reduction theory of Berger and the negotiation models developed by Fisher and Ury and Mastenbroek are related to question behaviour, which is analysed with the Verbal Response Mode Taxonomy of Stiles. Pre- and post-negotiation questionnaires were developed and administered to relate the results of the linguistic analysis to the perceptions of the negotiators in order to test the ecological validity of UR. Asking questions appeared to be a critical success factor in both monocultural and intercultural business negotiation on the basis of their relation with UR variables and Kelley game profit levels, but in a different sense to Gudykunst et al., who suggest that questions reduce uncertainty by increasing attributional confidence in a general way, seemingly irrespective of a national cultural background. In this study the Dutch, starting from a higher level of issue-related global confidence, used questions significantly less than the Spanish to attribute confidence to the person, indicating a cultural difference. Most questioning differences appeared to be language - as well as culture-bound. The Spanish asked significantly more for acknowledgement, and the Dutch asked more indirect questions with disclosure, but the two groups did not differ in global uncertainty and attributional confidence after their negotiations. They seemed to reduce uncertainty by adopting a passive, unobtrusive observation strategy. It may be that the type of information needed to become more confident depends on the communicator's personality rather than on his or her cultural background. Dutch and Spanish managers would therefore be advised to balance openness and vagueness to reach their negotiation goals in maximizing profits by using a combination of clear and ambiguous questions and answers and to be aware of the linguistic differences in questioning between Spanish and Dutch, which may even be carried over to English when it is used as a tool of communication. (shrink)

Language and Ontology: Linguistic Relativism (Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis) vs. Universal Grammar Universal Ontology vs. Ontological Relativity Semiotics and Ontology: Annotated Bibliography of John Deely. First part: 1965-1998 Annotated Bibliography of John Deely. Second part: 1999-2010 The Rediscovery of John Poinsot (John of St. Thomas).

The history of so-called ‘linguistic relativity’ is an odd and multifaceted one. After knowing alternate fortunes and being treated by different academic branches, today there are some new ways of investigating the language-thought-reality problem that put into dialogue the latest trends in language-related disciplines generate room for philosophical themes previously overlooked, reassess the very idea of linguistic relativity, despite its popularized versions which have circulated for decades and which have led an otherwise fruitful debate to extremes. It is argued that (...) a multidisciplinary approach is desirable in order to broaden future research. In the last few years the opportunity to study this matter following a common trend in several disciplines has been created. Language, and cognition too, are now conceived as intrinsically social phenomena. It is argued that relativistic effects should be investigated in social realms, and that analytic philosophy could help with this task. (shrink)

On attribue communément à Humboldt l’origine de la thèse selon laquelle la structure du langage détermine la structure de la pensée, connue sous le nom d’hypothèse de Sapir-Whorf. Nous voulons reprendre les conceptions de Humboldt en la matière à leur source, c’est-à-dire dans le contexte de sa réflexion sur les enjeux philosophiques et anthropologiques reliés au grand mouvement comparatiste allemand du XIXe siècle. Après avoir esquissé la mesure herméneutique de son approche du langage, nous indiquerons sommairement comment Humboldt (...) concevait en fait la relation entre la pensée et le langage en termes d’action réciproque et de synthèse.Humboldt is commonly identified as the source of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, according to which, in its canonical formulation, the structure of language determines the structure of thought. We intend to briefly revisit Humboldt’s conceptions on the matter, with the view of putting them into the context of the philosophical and anthropological issues involved in the early historical comparative movement. Having first outlined Humboldt’s general methodological-hermeneutical approach to language, we then proceed to show how Humboldt, indeed, conceived of the relation that obtains between language and thought in terms of mutual interaction and synthesis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Twentieth-Century French PhilosophyRonald ShustermanTwentieth-Century French Philosophy, by Eric Matthews; 232 pp. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996, $13.95 paper.Pace the habitual proverb, one of the best things about this volume is indeed its cover: a picture of Sartre lighting his pipe, in some Parisian cafe, in the midst of an animated discussion with Simone de Beauvoir and Mr. and Mrs. [End Page 188] Boris Vian. There is an (...) “arty” dimension to French philosophy which has mostly disappeared from English thought since the time of Russell. One could hardly imagine illustrating a history of recent English philosophy with (say) a picture of P. F. Strawson sitting in a bar with some rebellious trumpet-player-cum-novelist. Matthews manages to give the reader an exceptionally clear idea of the thought of those whom he considers to be the most significant French philosophers of our time. Perhaps the selection is too restrictive; some of the major figures who are completely—or almost completely—absent from this volume include Jacques Maritain, Michel Serres, Paul Ricoeur, Vladimir Jankélévitch, and Gilles Deleuze. Matthews’s work, however, is intended as an introduction, so his survey is necessarily light. The justification for the selection is that the essence of twentieth-century French thought involves an emphasis on subjectivity. This emphasis is examined in the work of Bergson who was the first of many to underline the role of the self and the body in our dealings with the world. Direct quotations of the major texts are infrequent; this, however, is probably for the best—or so one feels when one encounters examples such as “Value is the self in so far as the self haunts the heart of the for-itself as that which the for-itself is” (p. 76). Matthews excels at “translating” the ideas of Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Lacan, Foucault, Derrida and others into an English acceptable to even the most pedestrian ordinary language philosopher.Many readers may, however, be dissatisfied with some of Matthews’s classifications. Structuralism, for example, is represented here by Lacan and Foucault. Matthews correctly underlines Foucault’s “suspicion of a priori theorizing” (p. 149) but one has to remember that many of the great literary structuralists such as Barthes or Genette did base their work on abstract reasoning. In their hands, structuralism was hardly anti-scientific, so for someone coming to philosophy from literary theory, Matthews’s definition and examples are confusing. But perhaps these classifications are not essential to Matthews’s argument about the growth of subjectivity. It is indeed this subjectivity which emerges not only as Matthews’s thesis but as his target as well. He notes in Lacan’s philosophy the “lack of any serious argumentative support” and a “failure to offer empirical evidence for what looks like an empirical account” (p. 147). After a brief discussion of Foucault’s overall project, Matthews concludes that “one may feel a lingering suspicion that it is fatally flawed” (p. 156). This is frustrating and unfair; there is no point mentioning this flaw if one does not go on to work it out. Other philosophers get the same treatment. For example, Matthews argues against Lyotard’s picture of science as discredited: “Society might... find it hard to believe in science any more, without it being true that science was unbelievable” (p. 186). One may agree with Matthews on this point, but all of these rapid end-of-chapter dismissals remain rather superficial.Unfortunately, Matthews rarely builds the necessary bridges to make his study more illuminating. There is a passage on Bergson’s distinction between [End Page 189] “analysis” and “intuition” which is quite close to Russell’s distinction between “knowledge by description” and “knowledge by acquaintance.” Other such bridges could be built between Merleau-Ponty and pragmatism, or Saussure, Lévi-Strauss, and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. There is a reason for the absence of these connections: Matthews’s basic premise is that there is something specific about French philosophy; too many obvious bridges to other thinkers would undermine his entire argument. One of Matthews’s goals is to demonstrate that it is “important to the understanding of works of philosophy... (shrink)

The basis of perception is the processing and categorization of perceptual stimuli from the environment. Much progress has been made in the science of perceptual categorization. Yet there is still no consensus on how the brain generates sensory individuals, from sensory input and perceptual categories in memory. This chapter argues that perceptual categorization is highly variable across perceivers due to their use of different perceptual strategies for solving perceptual problems they encounter, and that the perceptual system structurally adjusts to the (...) strategies that are most successful. Despite this variability, the different sensory individuals that result when different perceivers rely on different strategies nonetheless correspond to actual external world objects/features. This view is called 'perceptual pluralism'. (shrink)

One of the very difficult problems with the linguistic relativity hypothesis lies in establishing precisely what claims are being made by the hypothesis. In this work, Penn suggests that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis can be effectively regarded as two hypotheses: an "extreme" one claiming that thought is dependent upon language, and a "mild" one claiming merely that language exercises some influence upon cognition.

In this chapter, I critically examine two of the main approaches to colour categorization in cognitive science: the perceptual salience theory and linguistic relativism. I then turn to reviewing several decades of psychological research on colour categorical perception (CP). A careful assessment of relevant findings suggests that most of the experimental effects that have been understood in terms of CP actually fall on the cognition side of the perception-cognition divide: they are effects of colour language, for example, on memory or (...) decision-making. (shrink)

For over a century, the question of the relation of language to thought has been extensively discussed in the case of color categorization, where two main views prevail. The relativist view claims that color categories are relative while the universalistic view argues that color categories are universal. Relativists also argue that color categories are linguistically determined, and universalists that they are perceptually determined. Recently, the argument for the perceptual determination of color categorization has been undermined, and the relativist view has (...) regained some ground. This paper argues that although the universalistic account of color categorization has been called into question, this is not enough to establish relativism. Color categories can still be said to be universal or particular, independent of the accounts of their universality or relativity. Because of its polarization, the debate has disregarded some issues that are key in our understanding of color categorization: the question of what a color category is and how to identify it. (shrink)

Strawson described ‘descriptive metaphysics’, Bach described ‘natural language metaphysics’, Sapir and Whorf describe, well, Sapir-Whorfianism. And there are other views concerning the relation between correct semantic analysis of linguistic phenomena and the “reality” that is supposed to be thereby described. I think some considerations from the analyses of the mass-count distinction can shed some light on that very dark topic.

Introduction -- 1. The settling of a language -- 2. The Whorf hypothesis -- 3. Relativism or a universal theory? -- 4. What does language have to do with logic and mathematics? -- 5. A test bed for grammatical theories -- 6. The Chomsky hierarchy in perpsective -- 7. Reflexivity and identity in language and cognition -- 8. The generalized logic hierarchy and its cognitive implications -- 9. The intensionalization of extensions.

At the time of his death in May of 2012, Ralph Pred was working on a critical social theory inspired by process philosophy. In the book manuscript he left unfinished, Syntax and Solidarity, he develops a “radically empirical” sociology that enables him to identify and critically evaluate the different forms that social solidarity has taken in the history of civilization. The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the importance of his unfinished project. The executors of Pred’s literary (...) estate would be happy to see his project, with due acknowledgment, publicized and continued. Keywords: Active Voice Bias, Concrescence, Middle Voice, Sociogeny, Solidarity, Substance. (shrink)

This paper investigates temporal interpretations in Pirahâ, a Muran language spoken in the Brazilian Amazon basin. The analysis assumes the neoReichen-bachian model of tense syntax proposed in Hornstein and argues that this model provides an elegant account of tense-related facts in Pirahâ, iff it is parametrized. Whereas Hornstein predicts that all tense systems will have a temporal reference point, this paper argues that languages may be parametrized as [+R] or [-R] and that this has important implications for their temporal syntax. (...) Moreover, the paper also argues that it is no coincidence that the Pirahâ place little importance on precision time statements, or that the Pirahâ have difficulty translating such statements, since their language does not draw temporal distinctions based on R. The parametrization of R among the Pirahâ is argued to offer anew source of support for Sapir's linguistic relativity hypothesis. (shrink)

The Whorfian hypothesis has received support from recent findings in psychology, linguistics, and anthropology. This evidence has been interpreted as supporting the view that language modulates all stages of perception and cognition, in accordance with Whorf’s original proposal. In light of a much broader body of evidence on time perception, I propose to evaluate these findings with respect to their scope. When assessed collectively, the entire body of evidence on time perception shows that the Whorfian hypothesis has (...) a limited scope and that it does not affect early stages of time perception. In particular, all the available evidence shows that the scope of language modulation is limited in the case of time perception, and that the most important mechanisms for time perception are cognitive clocks and simultaneity windows, which we use to perceive the temporal properties of events. Language modulation has distorting effects, but only at later stages of processing or with respect to specific categorization tasks. The paper explains what is the role of these effects in the context of all the available evidence on time cognition and perception. (shrink)

Historically, researchers divided over whether the diverse representations of reality across languages were natural or conventional, but all tacitly assumed an optimal fit between language and reality. Twentieth century anthropological linguists interested in linguistic relativity have questioned this assumption and sought to characterize "reality" without it by using domain- or structure-centered approaches.

Both philosophy and linguistics have emphasized the importance of language as a means of dialogue. Despite the fact that Wittgenstein added a new layer of complication to this point of view, the Sapir-Whorf theory, proposed by Edward Sapir and his colleague Benjamin Lee Whorf, helped the impact of language on the mind acquire notoriety. With this idea, language not only continued to be a means of communication but also received recognition in the social science curriculum as (...) a crucial element in the development of personal identities and the process of knowledge assimilation. The effect of language on morality and ethics was the most significant element that philosophers and linguists overlooked in their extensive study. For instance, little is known about how the terms we choose can influence how we understand morality and ethics. The sole subject of this article will be how language influences the moral and ethical decisions we make. To put it another way, how we make choices is greatly influenced by the language or beliefs we use in both public and private life. This means that in order to understand a country’s law or socially accepted norms, it is crucial to closely examine the language that country uses. The options or goals that are publicly acceptable are also closely related to the language, metaphors, and discourses used by a specific society. The contemporary world does not analyze these incidents from a linguistic perspective, but language has contributed to the creation of accepted legal and social standards. (shrink)

This paper aims to shed light on the terminological and conceptual area around linguistic relativity (nowadays a mostly empirically conceived problem), namely the relations with relativism as a philosophical position. Throughout history and up to now there has been a degree of confusion in handling the terms ‘linguistic relativity’, ‘linguistic relativism’, ‘linguistic determinism’ and the like, all in a more or less conscious fashion. Here it is clarified that linguistic relativity, at least as construed by the recent Neo-Whorfian literature (but (...) also in some important sense, from Whorf ’s own point of view as well) is not, by definition, the same as linguistic determinism, but neither is a form or relativism. On the other hand, relativism, maintains the recent philosophical literature, is a family of theses that share a number of common features even though a single defining core is not easily identifiable. While linguistic relativity does have some connections with some of those features, to make it collapse into an easily dismissible kind of relativism is a crucial misconception of the nature and scopes of such an idea, i.e., that different languages have a different bearing on speakers’ cognition and actions. (shrink)

Corruption has traversed all lengths and breadth of the Nigerian nation. The corrupt practice is mostly ornamented with language. The present study aims to ascertain the linguistic codings used to mask corruption in educational, civil service, political and social settings. Data for the study were collected from notable online newspaper and media sources, which include: _The Vanguard, The Guardian, The Punch, This Day, The Nation, The Premium, Sahara Reporters, Naira land_ and others published between 2015 and 2021. The data from (...) online sources were complemented by focused group discussions, unstructured interviews and participant’s observation method. The study adopted a qualitative research design and a random sampling method in selecting a total of hundred respondents from the five states that make up the southeast zone in Nigeria. The paper anchored its analyses on the conceptual model of Sapir-Whorf relativity framework and the analyses were done using interpretative textual analysis model. Findings from the study reveal that using words, phrases and expressions which are reflected in coinages, code-mixing, reduplication, metonymy, metaphor, slang, borrowing, pidginization, lexical reversals and creative usages to mask corruption have far-reaching effects on national development. The paper recommends that in considering the fight against corruption, the government should pay attention to the linguistic embellishments that act as the lifeline of the negative practice. (shrink)