Language and thinking

[Jonathan Lighter]

WARNING: Long, tedious. Only read if you care.

"In...Humpty Dumpty...we have to mark the verb for tense": But it doesn't
matter because we could just as easily put the whole rhyme in the present
tense and, though sounding a little odd, it would still make sense.

"In Indonesian...you can't...change the verb to mark the tense":  In
Indonesian, tense is indicated through the use of adverbs and particles.  So
Indonesians can talk about any time they like, whenever they want.

"In Russian...you...have to mark tense and gender": And you do so
automatically. But so what? The biggest difference, it seems to me, is that
the Russian version would have to include a bit more (insignificant)
information. Does Humpty's gender matter? (Well, maybe to another egg....)
And whether the action of sitting was "completed" or not makes no difference
to the story: they still couldn't put him or her together again. And
isn't one tense a default that you use when you're not sure whether the
"action was completed"?

"In Turkish...you...have to include in the verb how you acquired the
information": If your verb claims that you saw the Humpty tragedy "with your
own eyes," people will laugh or make rotating finger gestures by the side of
their heads.  Surely there's an conventional aspect or default aspect for
fiction.

The real issue is not whether "thinking" in the abstract is influenced
("shaped" seems a bit much) by morphology and syntax. The real and
interesting issue is to what degree.  In a nursery rhyme, any influence on
cognition is unlikely to have practical consequences. In the case of
eyewitness testimony, any grammatical "influence" on what is reported may be
counterbalanced by closer questioning - assuming the testimony is that
important.

 "Wardrobe malfunction" is a "wonderful nonagentive coinage."  Right.
Obviously the shackles of English grammar were no hindrance to JT when he
came up with it.  And the fact that "ripped the costume" and "the costume
ripped" are both normal English constructions shows that languages are
flexible, not rigid.

Furthermore, an agentive syntax implies an agent: something or somebody
"ripped the costume."  (Are there any languages that have no agents? Now
*that* might be significant!)  If the costume is described as having just
"ripped," nobody's clearly to blame (at least in the limited context of the
test.)  Otherwise, there was a blameworthy agent. If the subjects were
fluent speakers, they knew that and imposed fines accordingly. In other
words, they simply trusted what they read. (I assume that the subjects had
no prior knowledge of the incident.)

It seems to me that in this case syntax cannot be separated from a reportial
slant. What would be more interesting would be if the test were done in a
language and re a situation where syntax was of *no* significance in *fixing
responsibility.* Any difference then would more likely have resulted from a
syntactical influence.

My favorite bit: "[I]n our criminal-justice system, justice has been done
when we've found the transgressor and punished him or her (rather than
finding the victims and restituting appropriately, and alternative approach
to justice)."

I'll say it's alternative!  The problems of such a system (e.g.,
transgressors running wild because no one wants to find them and society
will make restitution), would seem to make that kind of justice a
non-starter. Is there any society that does it that way? If so, what's their
syntax like?  ISTM that our current form of justice is influenced by reality
rather than syntactical tyranny.

[This intransitive sense of "restitute" isn't in MW, BTW.]

Once again, the media find themselves out of their depth even in Linguistics
101. (OK, 102.)

Or should that be _"finds itself" and "its depth"?  My God, the syntax makes
it impossible for me to understand the media!

JL

On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 9:13 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Language and thinking
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 10:27 AM +0000 7/30/10, Tom Zurinskas wrote:
> >Language tempers how we think
> >
> >http://tinyurl.com/2wxvgzf
> >
>
> Or not (obviously).  See the extensive discussions of Boroditsky's
> work (and other research on the (Sapir-)Whorf Hypothesis) on Language
> Log, most recently at http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2487
> with links to previous posts.  As several posters mention, this is an
> area rife with unproven hypotheses and oversimplification of
> competing views.  (Yes, I know--what area isn't?)
>
> LH
>
> >
> >Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL7+
> >see truespel.com phonetic spelling
> >
> >------------------------------------------------------------
> >The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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