1. 35 years of Cognitive Linguistics Session 11: Language and thought
Martin Hilpert

2. your questions

4. Does your language influence the way you think?
Today we’ll talk about the question whether your language may influence or even determine the way you think.
What’s up with the ice cream?

5. More important is what’s on top of the ice cream
More important is what’s on top of the ice cream. In my native language German, the liquid stuff that you pour over ice cream is called Soße
Soße is basically anything that is liquid and that you can pour over other kinds of food
salad, pork roast, and of course spaghetti

6. --------------------- Soße ------------------------
sauce
gravy
dressing
topping
Compare that to English. In English, sauce is for spaghetti, but not for pork roast. On meat, you put gravy.
On salad, you put dressing
ice cream gets topping
Now it looks like the Germans are simply more general and the English more particular, but that is not really the case
Soße

7. --------------------- Soße ------------------------
sauce
gravy
dressing
topping
Kompott
Interestingly, the English call fruity compotes sauce, and this would be odd for a German to call Soße
If you think about it, why not, actually?
Soße can be sweet, it can contain visible chunks of fruit or vegetable, think of sauce made from cherries or sauce that contains mushrooms
Still, I don’t quite see how you can group compote and tomato sauce together under the heading of sauce and then exclude sauce that is made for meat. Aren’t spaghetti sauce and meat sauce so much more similar?
However, what does all of this have to do with language and thought?
Words such as ‘sauce’ or ‘Soße’ are not just words, but they reflect a category, that is, a cognitive grouping that speakers of a language have made.
So, if two languages divide the things in the world into different categories, so that their respective terms overlap, but do not refer exactly to the same things,
then it means that the speakers of the two languages have different world views.
You could say that world view is perhaps a little highbrow when it comes to compote and ice cream, but of course, sauce is just one word, and there are many related words that have slightly different definitions in different languages.
Let’s for example look at three definitions of the word ‘culture’
Soße

8. Kultur:
Gesamtheit der geistigen und künstlerischen Errungenschaften einer Gesellschaft
‘The sum total of the intellectual and artistic achievements of a society’
Culture:
cultivation, the state of being cultivated, refinement, the result of cultivation, a type of civilisation
Ensemble des moyens mis en œuvre par l’homme pour augmenter ses connaissances, développer et améliorer les facultés de son esprit, notamment je jugement et le goût
OK, this is little more than anecdotal evidence, but nonetheless it is quite telling that national stereotypes even show up in dictionaries, if you look for them.
The idea that a society’s habits of thought are in some way crystallized in their language is a popular one that has been expressed over and over in the history of ideas.

9. Johann Gottfried Herder: Der Genius eines Volks offenbart sich nirgends besser als in der Physiognomie seiner Rede
The genius of a people shows itself like nowhere else in the physiognomy of its speech
J. G. Herder

10. B. Russell Bertrand Russell
We may study the character of a people by the ideas which its language best expresses. French, for instance, contains such words as ‘spirituel’ or ‘l’esprit’, which in English can scarcely be expressed at all;
whence we we naturally draw the inference, which may be confirmed by actual observation, that the French have more ‘esprit’ and are more ‘spirituel’ than the English.
B. Russell

11. Benjamin Lee Whorf: After long and careful analysis, the Hopi language is seen to contain no words, grammatical forms, constructions, or expressions that refer directly to what we call ‘time’.
I find it gratuitous to assume that a Hopi who knows only the Hopi language and the cultural ideas of his own society has the same notions, often supposed to be intuitions, of time and space that we have, and that are generally assumed to be universal.
not B. L. Whorf
B. L. Whorf

12. Dan Slobin: Each native language has trained its speakers to pay different kinds of attention to events and experiences when talking about them. This training is carried out in childhood and is exceptionally resistant to restructuring in adult second-language acquisition.
Thinking for speaking
D. Slobin

13. B. L. Whorf
F. Boas
The idea is most well-known as the so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
Benjamin Lee Whorf was a student of Edward Sapir, who in turn was a student of Franz Boas war, who was one of the founders of structural Linguistics in the United States, and also a central figure in the development of anthropology as an academic discipline.
What structuralists in America were mostly concerned with was the description of all the native north american languages, which were much more complex and much more alien than anything else that linguists had seen up to that point. This ‘otherness’ led to a substantial shift in linguistic thought:
Sanskrit, greek, and latin were no longer viewed as the superior model of what grammar ought to look like. The structures and grammatical categories of the classical languages was simply not very useful for the description of languages such as Chinook, Navajo, Nootka, Yana, Sarcee, or Kutchin. the conclusion was that the structure of these languages should be studied on their own terms.
The core of the sapir whorf hypothesis was hence the observation that everything was a lot more complicated than people had assumed. Often enough, the grammatical categories of one language did not match the categories that were found in the next village.
The philosophical conclusion for Sapir and whorf was that a language does not only express a certain world view, but that it determines the world view that its speakers can assume. So that alternatives to that view are not easily adopted. And because languages are so radically different, it was just a logical consequence that also world views could be radically and unpredictably different.
The two main points of the sapir-whorf hypothesis can be summarized as follows:
E. Sapir

14. If there are structural differences between two languages, then there are also differences in the habits of thought that their respective speakers have.
Through the acquisition of one’s native language one also acquires a world view which is not easily changed in later life.
The first point is probably uncontroversial.
Just to give an example, imagine a language in which the word for death penalty consists of a single syllable, and the word for vacation can only be expressed through a long and complicated sentence.
Would you like to live in a society that speaks in such a way?
Still, you have to wonder, if there is a linguistic difference, what exactly will be the resulting cognitive difference? For instance, if a language has no word for future time, does that mean that the speakers don’t bother thinking a lot about the future? Or, does it mean that the speakers are so accustomed to thinking about the future that they see it as part of their present situation, and hence they talk about it as if it were the present?
Who in this room thinks that no grammatical future means few thoughts about the future?
Who thinks: no grammatical future – lots of thoughts about the future?
the american economist Keith Chen believes in the second hypothesis, here is an abstract of a study that he did:

15. His result is that speakers from languages with grammatical futures view the future as disconnected from the present. Hence, they save less money, eat less healthy food, and they tend to engage in risky and hedonistic patterns of behavior.
The values for these variables correlate significantly.

16. now, of course, correlation does not necessarily imply causation
now, of course, correlation does not necessarily imply causation. And it should inspire serious doubts in you to hear that there is also a highly significant correlation between
the savings rates of speakers and the presence of rounded front vowels, like /y/
For every /y/ that people say, they save more for retirement.
That sounds totally absurd, but you will find scientists who try to make sense of this

17. Rounded vowels have been interpreted as the symptom of a grumpy national character, and of course, people who are notoriously pessimistic, would be expected to save more money for the bad times that are ahead
rounded vowels and the absence of future constructions could thus be seen as having a common cause in the pessimistic german world view, and they are possibly strengthening one another.
We can speculate a lot about this, but let’s go back to Sapir and whorf for a minute

18. If there are structural differences between two languages, then there are also differences in the habits of thought that their respective speakers have.
Through the acquisition of one’s native language one also acquires a world view which is not easily changed in later life.
Lets look at the second point once more
The second point is more problematic than the frst one, because it implies that linguistic forms are not just cognitive pathways, from which you can stray, and take a different route, but rather
language can really be a prison of your thoughts. Whorf endorses this idea by saying:
‘Grammar is not merely an instrument for reproducing ideas, but rather is itself the shaper of ideas, the program and guide for the individual’s mental activity, for his analysis of impressions.’
Linguistis have been fairly skeptical of this quite radical thought, not least because Whorf’s conclusions have mostly been based on observations that were shallow and not substantiated by more thorough investigation. It turns out that the Hopi have a lot of words about time.
So, what is the relation between language and thought? In this session I will present a couple of studies that deliver serious arguments for the position that language has an influence on thought,
IN order to prove that there is an effect, you first need to identify two languages that differ with respect to a given structural criterion
Then, you need to advance a hypothesis how this linguistic difference translates into a difference in cognition. When this hypothesis is constructed, you can run an experiment that groups from both languages do in identical form. So usually, the experiment analyzes non-linguistic behavior. Linguistic tasks are necessarily and trivially affected by the grammar of one’s language. But, if speakers are asked to perform a non-linguistic task, then there really should not be any differences between normal human beings, regardless of the language that they speak. If such differences nonetheless are found, one explanation might be the differences in language.
OK, so what are these studies about?

19. First, we’ll talk about color
First, we’ll talk about color. Color perception is the same across humans, but the expression of color differs across languages.
The next topic will be spoons, but this will not connect to the sauce topic. Rather, many languages have word classes that are based on characteristics of the referent. Yucatec Maya for instance has a marker for words that describe objects made from wood. The two spoons thus would have different markers. and this might lead them to see the world differently from how we see it.
Finally, we will discuss space and orientation in space. This is a topic that may seem universal, but we’ll see that it’s actually far from universal.

20. Human beings perceive color as a continuum of shades
but, our words for color are categorical
so we cut up the continuum in different ways and call one part of the continuum this, one part that

21. --------------- green --------------
blue
first four green, last four blue
some people may have turqoise, but that is really fancy
now there are languages with a word that includes green and blue, let’s call that grue
Vietnamesisch, Yucatec Maya, or Lakota
Now, assuming the sw-hypothesis, do speakers of vietnamese perceive shades of green and blue in a way that differs from us?
and if so, how could you show that?
grue

22. P. Kay Paul Kay has written an important book about color and language
in the worlds languages, there is a hierarchy to the way languages express color
If you know how many basic color terms there are in a language, that hierarchy can tell you which colors the language distinguishes
P. Kay

23. Stage III: Either green or yellow Stage IV: Both green and yellow
Stage I: Dark-cool and light-warm (this covers a larger set of colors than English "black" and "white".)
Stage II: Red
Stage III: Either green or yellow
Stage IV: Both green and yellow
Stage V: Blue
Stage VI: Brown
Stage VII: Purple, pink, orange, or grey
if there are only three basic color terms, then white black, red
five; white black red green yellow
six: white black red green yellow blue
in other words: there are amazing universals across languages
this may sound at first like evidence against sapir-whorf, but kay actually shows whorfian effects

24. this is the grue spectrum again
lets take three colors
if you juxtapose them you can make a so-called triplet test
which is the pair and which one is the odd man out?
lets take something more difficult

25. I see two blues and one green
you have to do this with lots of people
and with one group from a blue-green lg
and one group from a grue lg
and you have to give them a whole lot of triplets

26. all subjects see all triplets and decide which one is the odd man out

27. never separated (0%) sometimes (40%) always (100%)
hence, you will see for each pair, how often they are grouped together
the first pair was never separated, also when some other very similar green occurred as the third color
the third pair was always separated, so the third color was always more similar to one or the other
what interests us are the cases in which pairs are sometimes separated but not always
always (100%)

28. 0.1
0.2
0.4
0.7
0.8
0.5 1
how often two colors were separated you can visualize in a distance matrix such as this one

29. 0.1
0.2
0.4
0.7
0.8
0.5 1
these were almost always separated

30. 0.1 0.2 0.4 0.7 0.8 0.5 1 these two were rarely separated
0.1
0.2
0.4
0.7
0.8
0.5 1
these two were rarely separated
what is crucial now is whether these ratings differ across blue-green languages and grue languages
Specifically: do blue-green speakers overestimate the difference between turquoise colors when there is a linguistic border between two color shades?

31. English: 0.2 0.5 Tarahumara: 0.2 0.3 lets take these three
the objectively, physically measurable differences are exactly the same, they are one shade of meaning apart
so, if your perception of likeness and differences is just based on the wavelength of light, the distance between them should be the same
For the tahumara, grue mexican, this is exactly what happens
For a group of english speakers, the results are different: the blue color is excluded much more frequently
Tarahumara:

32. English:
lets take these three, here the physical differences are asymmetric
can speakers perceive this?
Tahumara speakers can
speakers of english cannot do this, their language makes the first difference smaller than it really is, and the second larger than it really is
the differences between 2 and three is across a linguistic boundary, and so speakers overestimate the difference
Tarahumara:

33. so this suggests a whorfian effect
speakers of different lgs perform differently in a non-linguistic task
why do speakers behave in this way?
a possible explanation is that they solve the task by resorting to language, so even though they don’t have to use language, they still do use language
hm, which color should I exclude, well, my lg distinguishes between green and blue, and so, these….
you could call this a ‘labeling strategy’
only english speakers can use this strategy, the tarahumara cannot use it
a second experiment tries to analyze whether this is going on

34. this is again with triplets, but only english speakers do the test
only two colors are visible
and the participants receive special instructions
they are told to judge the relative blueness and greenness of the colors. 1 is very green, not very blue, …
the frame can be moved back and forth
in the end the speakers tell what difference is larger
here, the labeling strategy no longer works
the middle color is relatively green, relatively blue
results?

35. English: 0.3 0.4 English Exp 2: 0.3 0.2 Tarahumara: 0.3 0.2
first experiment: speakers overestimate differences across color term boundaries
in the second experiment: estimates are closer to the physical realities
no difference between english and tarahumara from 1st exp
hence, color perception is not damaged, just distorted by language
English Exp 2:
Tarahumara:

36. some people were not convinced
if the cause is the labeling strategy, this would mean that its language does not usually influence thought
only if normal thought runs into difficulties, it uses language as a crutch, which then may have effects
Steve Pinker:

37. not S.Pinker S.Pinker ‘‘Now how on earth
does this guy expect me to pick two chips to put
together? He didn’t give me any hints, and they’re all
pretty similar. Well, I’d probably call these two ‘green’
and that one ‘blue,’ and that seems as good a reason to
put them together as any.’’
so, was all of Kay’s work just a false alarm?
there is research suggesting that it was not
not S.Pinker
S.Pinker

38. -------------- siniy ----------------
goluboy
all of these colors we call blue
in russian there is a distinction and no superordinate term
so there is no blue in russian, like there is no grue in english
the psychologist lera boroditsky has devised a test in which language is not usable as a help for the task
blue

39. still, also her experiment uses triplets
the participants had to decide as fast as possible which of the lower colors was identical with the upper one
the trick with the experiment is that for russian speakers there may be two conditions:

40. cross-category condition
sinyi
goluboy

41. sinyi sinyi within-category condition
hypothesis: russians are slower to react in the within category condition than in the cross-category condition
for the english all colors are blue, so there should not be a difference
sinyi
sinyi

42. there is an effect in the expected direction
when the two colors are from the same linguistic category, then the russians are slower
the english don’t differ
now the time for them to decide is too short for a linguistic naming strategy

43. but how can you be sure that it is language?
boroditsky show that it is the language by running a similar version of the experiment in which language is used as a distraction
participants do the experiment while they are doing something with language, counting backwards

44. when the russians do sth with their language, then the effect disappears
this means:; it’s the linguistic competence that drives the whorfian effect
or could it be that just any cognitive difficulty destroys the effect?
a third experiment involves a task that involves geometric reasoning

45. the distractor task slows down the performance, but the whorfian effect in the russians stays intact
so things are looking good for the sapir whorf hypothesis

46. from color to spoons
there is one important personality in the research on language and thought that I haven’t talked about much yet
roman jakobson

47. R. Jakobson RJ said one important thing:
lgs don’t differ much in what they can express. They differ importantly in what they must express
R. Jakobson

48. der rote Apfel schmeckt sauer die roten Äpfel schmecken sauer
in german, speakers have to mark whether they are talking about one thing or several things

49. are we obsessed with counting?
there are lgs without plural markers
Yucatec Maya, a language that the anthropologist John Lucy worked on

50. J. Lucy’s office Englisch and Yucatec Maya differ w/ regard to number
in english: sg is the default
if there are more than one, there is a marker
just for a little group of words, this is not the case: mass nouns: sugar, rice, sand, milk,
in yucatec, all nouns are like mass nouns. the basic form refers to a mass or many instances, if you want to refer to a single unit, you have to use a marker, a socalled classifier
J. Lucy’s office

51. classifiers specify the shape of the referent
eine eindimensionale Banane ist die Frucht
eine zweidimensionale Banane ist das Blatt
eine gepflanzte Banane ist das hier
ein Strauß Bananen
ein Bissen von einer Banane
this grammatical strategy is common in lgs that don’t have obligatory plural marking; sg-pl lgs, and classifier lgs
now for a yucatec speaker, sugar and tomato are not different kinds of nouns, but for us they are
in yucatec, all nouns function like sugar
so again, language imposes a category boundary that might have an effect on non-linguistic reasoning

52. does the presence of shape classifiers mean that yucatec speakers think a lot about shape or does it mean the opposite?
do yucatec speakers pay closer attention to form than english speakers?
Lucy hypothesizes that form is secondary for them and that substance is more important.
another triplet test: which one is the odd man out?

54. participants saw lots of triplets
Lucy’s hypothesis was that yucatec speakers differ systematically in their choices from english speakers, focusing on material instead of shape
this turned out to be the case: 60% of all responses selected the object from the different material
This contrasts with 23% responses in the english speakers.

55. could there be an explanation other than language?
John Lucy tested children who had not fully acquired the classifier system
hypotehsis: as lg competence grows, so does the preference for material choices

56. 7 year olds are the same across english and yucatec
between 7 and 9 there is a jump in the yucatec speakers
in 15 year olds the development is complete
for all that time, no change in then english population

57. then john lucy did something that was a little crazy
he made little crosses and circles from toothpaste, shaving foam and instant coffee
this experiment clearly favors material-based responses
but: english adults are so obsessed with shape, that they quite often sort after the shape rather than the material

58. so: children behave the same
no change in the yucatec over time
but as english children become acquired with the singular-pl distinction, they acquire a pref for shape over material

59. final topic for today: space

60. one way of thinking about space: the so-called relative frame of reference, sometimes called egocentric frame of reference
the figure has a front, a back, a top and a bottom
so the directions are called in front, behind, above, below, and so on.
For a second figure, the labels need not be the same
for us, left and right, front and back are different

61. another frame of reference is the intrinsic frame of reference
in an intrinsic frame of reference, positions in space are defined according to an object with natural sides and parts
so the helmsman is in the back of the ship, regardless from what side you look at the ship

62. The third frame of reference is the so-called absolute frame of reference in which the positions of things are expressed through absolute coordinates.
zurich is to the east of neuchatel, no matter where you are or no matter if a city has an intrinsic front and back.
What does this have to do with language?
people who study differences between lgs have found that not all lgs use these three frames of reference equally.
in the european lgs the first two are frequent
absolute: only for geography, never for objects, never inside buildings, although note that in this building, the rooms have absolute coordinates

63. in some lgs, absolute frames of reference are the norm
Which one is the hot water tap, the north one or the south one?

64. how can you investigate whether different frames of reference in a lg correlate with different ways of thinking about lgs?
one group of researchers has designed an experiment that is called animals in a row.
the test persons saw a line of animals in a row on a table, the stimulus table
when they had seen it, they were turned and saw an empty table, the recall table
their task was to reconstruct the row as they had seen it
the hypothesis was that speakers with an absolute frame of reference would do this in a way different from speakers with a relative frame of reference

65. this is how you and I would do it

66. this is how they would do it
speakers from different lgs were recruited
participants were trained on the stimulus table, mistakes were corrected, and
after the practice, the real experiment had participants reconstruct the row on the recall table
What was observed?

67. in lgs with abs frames of ref, a preference for absolute sorting

68. in lgs with relative frames of reference, the exact opposite
this has been interpreted as strong evidence for the s-w hypothesis:
: the linguistic system is far more than just an AVAILABLE pattern for creating internal representations: to learn to speak a language successfully REQUIRES speakers to develop an appropriate mental representation which is then available for nonlinguistic purposes.
language does not just make certain ways of thought easier or more convenient, it rather imposes some ways of thinking and prohibits others

69. OK, but was lg the only thing that was different across the speakers that were observed?
could it not be that in holland and japan, the participants were tested inside, and in mexico, they were outside? this might have affected responses.
so, some researchers hypothesized, that also english speakers could be coerced into making absolute sortings
in order to test this, they modified the original experiment

70. they just tested students from the University of Pennsylvania.
three conditions
one group of students in a dark room

71. one group of students in a room with a window

72. one group of students outside
hypothesis: more absolute sortings outside

73. results; fewest absolute sortings in the dark room
more absolute sortings in the light room and outside conditions
so: apparently, english speakers can be coaxed fairly easily into doing absolute sortings

74. as an alternative theory, they propose that abs frames develop in such cultures where there are salient landmarks that can be used for orientation
for instance, in a town where there is a lake on one side and mountains on the other, you permanently know whether you are looking towards the south or the north
to test this, they ran another variant of the experiment, which included a landmark, namely two kissing ducks
there were two conditions; one in which the ducks were on the opposite side from the stimulus table, one on the same side
hypothesis: position will influence the sortings

75. indeed, the ducks strongly influence the sortings

76. Levinson and colleagues did not quite agree with this

77. they published a reply arguing that Li and Gleitman misinterpret their own results so that in fact, their results would support the opposite conclusion

78. how do they do that?
here again are the three frames
der relative Rahmen, der intrinsische Rahmen, und der absolute Rahmen

79. What Li and Gleitman wanted to test was the competition between relative and absolute for
Levinson and colleagues point out that english speakers have only

80. had to decide between relative and intrinsic for

81. relative; left, right
Hier ist das weisse schaf links vom schwarzen, und das schwarze ist links vom grauen

82. Intr
here, speakers did not sort absolutely, but after an intrinsic for, putting the grey sheep next to the window,
in order to show that the english did not sort absolutely, they rerun their experiment

83. on the stimulus table they had the kissing ducks and three animals

84. the recall table was not turned by 180 deg but by 90 deg
so if someone were to sort absolutely

85. they would have to sort like this

86. but of course people sorted like that
so, levinson and colleageus argue
1. Li and Gleitman confuse absolute and intrinsic for
2. the Li and Gleitman experiments show that english speakers can switch between relative and intrinsic, which is no surprise
so, not much from the critique remains

87. Summing up
if you want to test a linguistic influence on thought
you have to do the following things

88. first find a grammatical category that is realized differently across two languages
a classic: tense, but also, definiteness, plural, aspect, etc.
from such a difference, you have to develop hypotheses how it could relate to differences in thought

89. S.C. Levinson and participants
these ways of thinking should be measurable in activities of daily life
so you have to come up with an experimental task that is non-linguistic; sorting animals an the like
the closer the task is to ordinary behavior, the better
S.C. Levinson and participants

90. The difficult thing is to show that the differences, if you find them, are caused by language.
one option is to use participants who have not yet fully mastered language
another option is to use distraction tasks where language is kept busy while the task is being done

91. just as important:
when you read online that german vowels make people grumpy, how do you check whether there is any substance to this claim?
what kind of evidence would have to be there so that you would take this research seriously?
I would hope that you ask the following questions:

92. First: is the relation between grammatical structures and cognitive habits of thought well-motivated?
is there independent evidence that making a frowny face makes you unhappy?
Second; how was it measured that people think in a certain way?
did the researchers ask Germans to self-report happiness?
Third; have the researchers compared a broad sample of languages?
shouldn’t turks and french speakers also be very grumpy?
Fourth: was it tested whether the effect is specifically caused by language?
are babies less grumpy than adults? what about deaf germans? or bilingual germans?
what happens to germans if you take them to hawaii and they listen to unrounded vowels for four weeks. are they happier?

93. See you next week

94. See you next time!