RICK:In LILA Pirsig cites Whorf's Eskimo research for what appears to be the
more 'extreme' version. The 'hoax' is that Whorf apparently made the whole
research up. He never did any research and never even met an eskimo (Diana
referenced some material on this... I'll see if I can dig up the posts for
you).
ERIN: Maybe he just came up with the idea and other people tested it? There
have been lots of research done on it and the basic consensus was that
language influenced perception but did not determine it. There is actually
this other related research that looks at expertise and whether it influences
perception. So I would be a little hesistant to call it a hoax.
Most of the research I know looked at specific words such as color words. I
have been starting to get really interested in how grammar affects cognition
right now. I have read some literature on the differences of verb based
grammars vs object based grammars. SVO (subject-verb- object) vs SOV
(subject-object-verb). In this literature the verb based languages would be
the SOV (such as Korean). American children do not learn verbs as quickly as
Korean children but American learn more object words quickly. It is also
interesting because with American children they first learn action-oriented
verbs such as run and then learn verbs that involve action on another object
(open).
I thought that having that grammar wouldn't create the subject-object problem
we are so interested in (is there anybody in this forum that has a verb based
language as their native language...if not do you think the lack of interest
is because having that grammar it is not much of a problem?) I had always
considered Korean to be a verb based language and I was recently reading about
a Mayan language with the grammar structure of VOS. I have trouble even
imagining what it is like to think with that grammar. I was reading another
article about Eprime today and look at what it says.
WILSON:
To understand E-Prime, consider the human brain as a computer. (Note that I
did not say the brain "is" a computer.) As the Prime Law of Computers tells
us, GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT (GIGO, for short). The wrong software guarantees
wrong answers. Conversely, finding the right software can "miraculously" solve
problems that previously appeared intractable.
It seems likely that the principal software used in the human brain consists
of words, metaphors, disguised metaphors, and linguistic structures in
general. The Sapir-Whorf-Korzybski Hypothesis, in anthropology, holds that a
change in language can alter our perception of the cosmos. A revision of
language structure, in particular, can alter the brain as dramatically as a
psychedelic. In our metaphor, if we change the software, the computer operates
in a new way.
Any thoughts?
Erin
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