LL-L "Grammar" 2009.01.06 (07) [E]

Wed Jan 7 00:16:08 UTC 2009

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L O W L A N D S - L - 06 January 2009 - Volume 07
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From: M.-L. Lessing <marless at gmx.de>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2009.01.05 (06) [E]

Dear Luc & all,

thank you for the info, Luc & Reinhard! This idea of language influencing
3-dimensional thinking is most fascinating, but surely must be considered
cum grano salis. If there is a statistically significant effect like what
you describe, I see three possibilities:

1. As Luc put it: They have difficulties with 3D, because their language is
not quite up to 3D.

2. Their language can't cope with 3D, because they have difficulties with 3D
perception and thus neglect it.

3. Their brains just work differently, and the language peculiarities as
well as 3D problems result from that quite independently.

The last one sounds not quite plausible, at least very little probable, but
still --. If the second assumption should be true, then it must have been a
recent change or evolution must have been slumbering deeply, for what
hunter-gatherer-people could survive without clear 3D perception?

So your No.1 assumptions sounds most logical. All that, mind you, only *if*
a real difference in 3D perception in turkish people could be proven beyond
statistical errors and unter conditions otherwise strictly the same.

This seems a thin ice we tread, because I feel we are near something like
assigning "the better language"-badge to some or other language, which
cannot be done in earnest. It seems like saying: "If you turkish midfield
players can't pass the ball on forward precisely, just change your language,
and turkey may be european champion soon!" (They are not so bad...!) But
anything like ranking, spite, language racism aside -- it just fascinates me
so much!! And it seems plausible, too: Language is what thoughts are made
of, and we conceive the world with our thoughts. So our language is somehow
the world. Investigating the mechanisms of how we acquire our world is a
delicate business. (I imagine infuriated turkish soccer players.) If anyone
can tread this round, honest science can.

Does anyone know, read, admire Peter Dickinson? He is a writer of novels and
crime stories, of a sort that really stuns me. In one of his books, "The
poison oracle", he describes a people whose language cannot express
causality. In effect of this (!) they have no idea (!) of the
cause-and-effect concept. Their brains cannot perceive cause-and-effect
mechanisms. This is a bold sketch, but Dickinson does it all so well that
you really think a people could survive without his, despite the sharp teeth
of natural selection. However when an individual is isolated from the tribe
and taught English, her brain is quite capable of learning what causality
is. -- Can this be possible? We might need a neurologist here perhaps :-)
For me it is all guesswork, but I would love to know more.

Hartlich!

Marlou

•

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