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There is also the chicken and egg aspect to the language-culture/cognition relationship: for a linguistic pattern to be repeated often enough for it to become fully conventionalized (at the societal level) and habitualized (at the individual level), it necessarily
must initially be motivated by something in the cognition or culture of the speakers, otherwise they would not put the extra effort into constraining the addressee's inference of the speaker's communicative intention in that particular way. Once it is conventionalized/habitualized,
then it often will persist for a time even if the situation changes and the motivation is no longer there. As much of a speaker's culture is learned through the language, then even if they are no longer motivated the particular patterns, and the associated
cognitive categories, will be passed down through the generations.
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<div>Because of this, although it is good if we find direct correlations between language and culture/cognition, the emphasis on finding particular smoking guns sort of misguides the discussion. </div>
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<div>Also, in relation to this article and studies using statistics and material implications generally, a material implication or a statistical correlation does not entail a causal relation.</div>
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<div>Randy<br>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; ">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; "><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; ">-----</span></span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; ">
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<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; "><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; "><b>Prof.
Randy J. LaPolla, PhD FAHA</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>（罗仁地）| Head, Division of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies | Nanyang Technological University</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; "><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><br>
<span style="background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; ">HSS-03-45, 14 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637332</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><span style="background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; "> | </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; "><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; ">Tel:
(65) 6592-1825 GMT+8h | Fax: (65) 6795-6525 | <a href="http://sino-tibetan.net/rjlapolla/">
http://sino-tibetan.net/rjlapolla/</a></span></span></span></div>
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<div>On Feb 27, 2013, at 6:12 AM, Bill Palmer wrote:</div>
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<div>Utterly ludicrous, yes. But not in principle different to some of the claims made in relation to linguistic relativity. Basically the claim can be rephrased as follows: grammatical encoding of a distinction between future and present forces speakers to
attend to that distinction, and influences the way the child constructs conceptual representations of time and their own relationship to time as they acquire the language. As cross-modal correlations for many such conceptual representations are well established,
the null hypothesis is that the grammatical categories of the langauge are influencing conceptual categories that surface in a range of other behaviours.<br>
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Obviously in this case the details contain errors and omissions - as others have noted English is not a "strong FTR" language, and the 'typology' this guy proposes does not take into account a presumably comparable effect of a distinction between realis and
irrealis in tenseless languages. However, they're details, and I can't help feeling that if this hypothesis had been proposed by a linguist and couched in sober scientific neo-Whorfian language we wouldn't be having this discussion.<br>
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Bill<br>
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<br>
Dr Bill Palmer<br>
Deputy Head of School - Research<br>
School of Humanities and Social Science<br>
Convenor, Endangered Languages Documentation,<br>
Theory and Application Research Group<br>
Linguistics Research Higher Degree/Honours coordinator<br>
HSS<br>
University of Newcastle<br>
Callaghan NSW 2308<br>
Australia<br>
email <a href="mailto:bill.palmer@newcastle.edu.au">bill.palmer@newcastle.edu.au</a><br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">Nigel Vincent <<a href="mailto:nigel.vincent@MANCHESTER.AC.UK">nigel.vincent@MANCHESTER.AC.UK</a>> 27/02/13 3:14 AM >>><br>
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At Frans' prompting I post this piece of nonsense for typological (or indeed other!) comment:<br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21518574">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21518574</a><br>
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Nigel<br>
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<br>
Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA<br>
Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics<br>
The University of Manchester<br>
<br>
Vice-President for Research & HE Policy, The British Academy<br>
<br>
Linguistics & English Language<br>
School of Arts, Languages and Cultures<br>
The University of Manchester<br>
Manchester M13 9PL<br>
UK<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
http://www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/subjects/lel/staff/nigel-vincent/<br>
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