Which comes first, language or thought? (fwd)

[Matthew Ward]

Obviously, language is the primary way that human beings express
thought, and obviously, language expresses the different ways of
thinking practiced by different cultures, but there can be little debate
that thought precedes language and is largely independent of it.  After
all, there are highly intelligent adults who can express complex thought
in various ways but who happen to lack language.  Clearly, complex
thought is not dependent on complex speech.  Even for the majority of us
who are able to use language, we are all familiar with the experience of
having a thought and being unable to express it.  And then there are
animalsâ~@~Tthe higher animals are unable to use language, but does that
mean they do not have thoughts?

Many studies on this subject, like the one below, show that people are
somewhat more likely to remember categories or notice distinctions that
are explicitly stated in their native languages, and this is interesting
evidence of how language interacts with thought.  However, the idea
(once popular with linguistic determinists and still widely held by
educated laypeople) that language is thought or that language is an
insidious shaper of thought does not hold up to scrutiny.

Many language preservationalists are attracted to the "language is
thought" belief, because it seems to be a compelling reason for the
preservation of language.  Ironically, the same belief is frequently
used against language preservation:   "Navajo {or Tibetan, Basque, etc.}
cannot possibly be used in the modern world because it allows only a way
of thinking that somehow precludes understanding nuclear physics, stock
markets, and electric nose-hair pullers."  While the bigots refuse to
acknowledge the enormous flexibility that all human language possesses,
the preservationists sometimes miss the real reason for language
preservation:  how individual languages preserve and reflect the
collective thinking of entire cultures:  thousands of years of human
interaction, idea-sharing and creativity.  After all, it is much easier
to transfer the simple expression of a world-view from one language to
another than it is to transfer the myriad forms of cultural genius
contained in each language that the world-view is based on.  If the
original language is lost, the culture loses this enormous wealth of
collective genius, and that is the chief reason why language loss
represents intellectual disaster.  Cultures have stories, oral or
written histories, songs, chants, poems, idioms, folk-sayings, and
prayers, to name a few, and although many of these things can be
translated with their literal meaning more or less preserved, they
essentially become different works of art when they pass into another
language.  Even simple lexical items, with each word having a unique
range of meanings and cultural and historical implications, hold a great
key to thousands of years of human interaction.

All of this is far more profound and important than mundane things like
remembering colors based on the categories that ones native language
possesses, or whether one notices that cylinders fit tightly or loosely
into containers.  Iâ~@~Ym not dismissing the importance of these studies,
but I do not think that they will ever make compelling arguments for
language diversity.


phil cash cash wrote:

>Which comes first, language or thought?
>Babies think first
>http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/07.22/21-think.html
>
>By William J. Cromie
>Harvard News Office
>
>It's like the chicken and egg question. Do we learn to think before we
>speak, or does language shape our thoughts? New experiments with
>five-month-olds favor the conclusion that thought comes first.
>
>"Infants are born with a language-independent system for thinking about
>objects," says Elizabeth Spelke, a professor of psychology at Harvard.
>"These concepts give meaning to the words they learn later."
>
>Speakers of different languages notice different things and so make
>different distinctions. For example, when Koreans say that one object
>joins another, they specify whether the objects touch tightly or
>loosely. English speakers, in contrast, say whether one object is in or
>on another. Saying "I put the spoon cup" is not correct in either
>language. The spoon has to be "in" or "on" the cup in English, and has
>to be held tightly or loosely by the cup in Korean.
>
>These differences affect how adults view the world. When Koreans and
>Americans see the same everyday events (an apple in a bowl, a cap on a
>pen), they categorize them in accord with the distinctions of their
>languages. Because languages differ this way, many scientists suspected
>that children must learn the relevant concepts as they learn their
>language. That's wrong, Spelke insists.
>
>Infants of English-speaking parents easily grasp the Korean distinction
>between a cylinder fitting loosely or tightly into a container. In
>other words, children come into the world with the ability to describe
>what's on their young minds in English, Korean, or any other language.
>But differences in niceties of thought not reflected in a language go
>unspoken when they get older.
>
>Spelke and Susan Hespos, a psychologist at Vanderbilt University in
>Nashville, Tenn., did some clever experiments to show that the idea of
>tight/loose fitting comes before the words that are used/not used to
>describe it.
>
>When babies see something new, they will look at it until they get
>bored. Hespos and Spelke used this well-known fact to show different
>groups of five-month-olds a series of cylinders being placed in and on
>tight- or loose-fitting containers. The babies watched until they were
>bored and quit looking. After that happened, the researchers showed
>them other objects that fit tightly or loosely together. The change got
>and held their attention for a while, contrary to American college
>students who failed to notice it. This showed that babies raised in
>English-speaking communities were sensitive to separate categories of
>meaning used by Korean, but not by English, adult speakers. By the time
>the children grow up, their sensitivity to this distinction is lost.
>
>Other experiments show that infants use the distinction between tight
>and loose fits to predict how a container will behave when you move the
>object inside it. This capacity, then, "seems to be linked to
>mechanisms for representing objects and their motions," Hespos and
>Spelke report.
>
>Their findings suggest that language reduces sensitivity to thought
>distinctions not considered by the native language. "Because chimps and
>monkeys show similar expectations about objects, languages are probably
>built on concepts that evolved before humans did," Spelke suggests.
>
>The researchers describe their experiments and conclusions in the July
>22 issue of the scientific journal Nature.
>
>The sounds of meaning
>
>Their findings parallel experiments done by others, which show that,
>before babies learn to talk for themselves, they are receptive to the
>sounds of all languages. But sensitivity to nonnative language sounds
>drops after the first year of life. "It's not that children become
>increasingly sensitive to distinctions made in the language they are
>exposed to," comments Paul Bloom of Yale University. Instead, they
>start off sensitive to every distinction that languages make, then they
>become insensitive to those that are irrelevant. They learn what to
>ignore, Bloom notes in an article accompanying the Hespos/Spelke
>report.
>
>As with words, if a child doesn't hear sound distinctions that it is
>capable of knowing, the youngster loses his or her ability to use them.
>It's a good example of use it or lose it. This is one reason why it is
>so difficult for adults to learn a second language, Bloom observes.
>"Adults' recognition of nonnative speech sounds may improve with
>training but rarely attains native facility," Spelke adds.
>
>Speech is for communicating so once a language is learned nothing is
>lost by ignoring sounds irrelevant to it. However, contrasts such as
>loose-versus-tight fit help us make sense of the world. Although mature
>English speakers don't spontaneously notice these categories, they have
>little difficulty distinguishing them when they are pointed out.
>Therefore, the effect of language experience may be more dramatic at
>the crossroad of hearing and sound than at the interface of thinking
>and word meaning, Hespos and Spelke say.
>
>Even if babies come equipped with all concepts that languages require,
>children may learn optional word meanings differently. Consider
>"fragile" or "delicately," which, unlike "in," you can leave out when
>you say "she delicately placed the spoon in the fragile cup."
>
>One view, Bloom points out, "is that there exists a universal core of
>meaningful distinctions that all humans share, but other distinctions
>that people make are shaped by the forces of language. On the other
>hand, language learning might really be the act of learning to express
>ideas that already exist," as in the case of the situation studied by
>Hespos and Spelke.
>
>There are lots of situations involving the relation between ideas and
>language that Hespos and Spelke did not address, so the debate is still
>open. Do people think before they speak or do words shape their
>thoughts?
>
>
>