Hello avid and not so avid forum followers,
How do yall feel about the relationship between language and thought? Is one possible without the other? Are they connected, meaning are humans capable of thought without language?
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Hello avid and not so avid forum followers,
How do yall feel about the relationship between language and thought? Is one possible without the other? Are they connected, meaning are humans capable of thought without language?
Interesting idea simon,
i find the aquisition of language fascinating....but as far as the ability to think without language...tough. according to the liguistic relativity hypothesis, the language that we learn not only influences, but also determnes what we are capable of thinking...
It has been suggested then, that languages that lack a past tense will have speakers that will have a difficult time with the concept of the past.
I think that theory is much too restrcitive, in that maybe the language that we learn may influence how we think, but we are not definitively restricted by it.
i think that without language humans are still capable of thought because the thinking that is done in language is actually only one form of thought. there are still imaginal thoughts, consisting of images, and motoric thought, which relates to mental representations of motor movements. So while prepostitional thought is dependent on the symbols of language, it is certainly not the only way to think.
anyhow, that's just what i think....;)
as demonstrated with our buddy Robert E. Lee. (forum member, not historical figure) Thought processes are NOT required for language.
(lol fool...)
This topic is a very 'hot' one among languages freak... I'm not really sure what I think but I guess thought is possible without language... but language is the expression of it...
To some extent, there muct be some sort of relationship between language and way of thinking, because different languages can express the same concept in many different ways... (for example in Russian there's not really a simple word as 'go', cos when you say 'go' you have to choose between a wide range of verbs which express the direction of the movement (one directione/more than one...) and the way (walking/transport/fly...)... So I wonder how a Russian feels when dealing with other languages...). And often I find a concept can be expressed 'better' in a language than in another... That's why translation can be the most frustrating of tasks... Am i going off-topic? Simon, you're too new to know the goldn rule: don't get me started on languages! :D (I can also end up becoming an annoying show-off...)
Consider an infant, they have thought, but without language formation, that thought is minimal. The thought process grows and develops along with the formation of language, and physical growth.
When we think in our heads, do we not think in the form of words?
Hmmm, if we don't need language, then do animals think? Then again, they communicate but not with languages. Does that mean that they think because they communicate even though they don't have a language?
I think that language may even restrict our thoughts to a certain extent. By formulating thoughts into language it may actually be like filtering thoughts through language. I think I may be touching on another thread I was reading on this forum, but to a certain extent do you guys think that the primary language we speak leads us towards certain opinions, personality, or problem solving styles?
That's a good one, Sancho. I agree that language can sometimes be restrictive to thought. Perhaps, however, to linear thinkers (you know, A to B to C kind of thinking) it's easier to think in linguistic terms -- or for people who are oral/aural thinkers.
I (for the purpose of an example) am *not* a linear thinker. For me, a thought usually forms as a complete concept, like a big Celtic knot - something like a cross between an image and a pure abstract thought. Then, to articulate that thought, I have to follow all the little strands through it and separate it into isolated ideas so it can get passed on to another part of my brain and have language applied to it. And in addition to that, at any one time I have about four different trains of thought going on, but only one at a time can receive the attention of the language center of my brain. (Then, when I open my mouth, watch out, cause they all try to squeeze out at once and I ramble from here to there like crazy.)
My point being: my learned language skills can't be what dictate what kinds of thought I'm capable of, because I have a lot of thoughts that simply can't be expressed verbally. Sometimes it's like trying to translate the emotions behind a symphony into binary code.
Another thing to consider is this: Hebrew, for instance, has no words to express abstract ideas; so instead of saying you can "appreciate" an idea, you would use the word "taste" (that's where we get the translation "taste and see the goodness of the Lord" in the psalm). However, that obviously doesn't mean that people for whom Hebrew was their first language were unable to think in abstract terms. After all, we're talking about the people who had the single greatest influence on the theology of the modern world.
Whew! Sorry (can you tell I get into this topic too? :p)
Not really, but as I said some concepts can be expressed more effectively in a language than in another.... It doesnt shape the mind of people, but sometimes you learn an expression in another language that makes you realise that you didnt have such a perfect expression for your thought in your own language.Quote:
Originally posted by Sancho
I think that language may even restrict our thoughts to a certain extent. By formulating thoughts into language it may actually be like filtering thoughts through language. I think I may be touching on another thread I was reading on this forum, but to a certain extent do you guys think that the primary language we speak leads us towards certain opinions, personality, or problem solving styles?
Imagine how language evolved. It probably developed from monosyllabic noise. Someone somewhere understood an emotion that someone else had when they made a monosyllabic sound. But if that was all there was to it, language would never have developed. So somebody realised the potential of knowing someone else's internal emotional state. That enabled them, after some time, to predict their subsequent behaviour. Once this caught on, a network of communication would slowly develop, until over time, this was formalised into a structured sequence of sound and meaning. Of course, this description is extremely simplified, but generally, this is probably what happened.
Language is a tool that helps us to abstract and categorise things in our environment. But if it is the case, as Wittgenstein seems to suggest, that language could not develop without a basic knowledge of the existence of other people and their minds, then somehow we had ideas of abstract concepts before language. Is it possible to have abstract concepts without a thought process? If language did develop as I have suggested, then before language occurred, someone 'understood' concepts like 'other people', 'other minds', 'internal states', 'emotions' etc. I find it difficult to imagine such concepts without a thought process occurring.
However, it is a difficult subject to think about, and as I'm currently suffering from a very bad cold, my thought might not be quite up to it at the moment!!
AP
I believe that communication can occure with out thought, However a lack of communication does not mean that there is no thought. For example a picture can communicat a great deal but contains no thought, however a hermit who does not communicat with the outside world still has thought, he just chooses not to communicate.
I think it's hard to discuss language becuase you have to do it through language, and then you start thinking about your thoughts and whether or not they are in words or pictures or what not, and then there's just total confusion.
I was reading part of this book by this linguist, Steven Pinker, and he tried to prove that there is a language of thought called Mentalese, inside our heads, that differs from the language of communication. I'm not sure of it's existence but he poses some examples like a man who didn't know how to speak, but was able to grasp concepts like numbers. My question is was the reason he was able to grasp the concept becuase he was communicating that he had grasped the concept, meaning that with learning communication he had learned thought process? But then you have to wonder how the guy survived, and ate, didn't he have to think to find food and shelter, and what happened when he met other humans?
Does any of that make sense?
Language is a way of communicating one's thoughts to another, right ? In that way every thinking being , every being which has consciousness , even a dog or a flea , has some language - some way to communicate to other beings. But what is ultimately getting communicated or understood , is much lesser that what the original thought was. I guess thats the reason why we cant define love , we cant define or convince somebody about God , we cant exactly define ecstasy , joy or utter sadness.
i think thats why i feel happy when i read old poems . there are words , now deprecated , used to mean some feeling which we just had in our minds ....
whatever .. hope u are getting what i'm saying !!
Like so totally, for sure. (See, as I just demonstrated that language CAN exist without thought ;)) "Mentalese" sounds like overanalyzing the obvious, while simultaneously not grasping the concept at all! Poor Steven Pinker. Perhaps a good percentage of the time people should really be abstaining from language completely and exploring their other ways of understanding the universe, rather than approaching the mind like a foreign language to be translated.
it's interesting, one of my best friends is from panama, and i took spanish recently; asked her about the 14 different verb tenses in the spanish language and how hard was it to learn english - she said it feels like it's "missing something" that was the only way she could explain it - and she has a degree in english and teaches both languages to high school students. i wish i had some grasp of what she was getting at, because i had never found my native language lacking...but now i do - a sort of "what if?"
That's why I consider English grammatically very easy... My English ex-whatver saw me like some sort of genius cos I can keep in mind all the Italian tenses (which are similar to the Spanish)...while it's not like I keep them in mind really...they're there cos they're my naitve way of expression... While English has not much inflection in its verbs really... And don't get me started about Russian verbs...they're hell for a non-slavic speaker, and surely the Russians feel our verbs lack something, cos theirs are much more precise: like the example I made about verbs of motion, or like they have prefixes that indicate the beginning of the action while we use another verb... or they even have a word which means 'talk while you're doing something else'!!!
This is what i was meaning when i said that different languages may feel richer in a sense and poorer in another, cos they express things in different ways, and it's sometimes hard to grasp the way of thinking of the other language.
Anyway, back on language/thought... think of the aphasics (--> people that have an illness where they can't speak): it's not like they don't think... !
Been trying to edit but the forum is playing up... :(
That's why I consider English grammatically very easy... My English ex-whatever saw me like some sort of genius cos I can keep in mind all the Italian tenses (which are similar to the Spanish)...while it's not like I keep them in mind really...they're there cos they're my naitve way of expression... While English has not such variety (even if ti does have some more precise sides imo) nor much inflection in its verbs really... And don't get me started about Russian verbs...they're hell for a non-slavic speaker, and surely the Russians feel our verbs lack something, cos theirs are much more precise: like the example I made about verbs of motion, or like they have prefixes that indicate the beginning of the action while we use another verb... or they even have a word which means 'talk while you're doing something else'!!!
This is what i was meaning when i said that different languages may feel richer in a sense and poorer in another, cos they express things in different ways, and it's sometimes hard to grasp the way of thinking of the other language.
Anyway, back on language/thought... think of the aphasics (--> people that have an illness where they can't speak): it's not like they don't think... !
Great thread! Emily, I enjoyed your post; it was thought provoking for me. You obviously have thought in depth about this subject. Sadly I do not understand Hebrew. I wish I did, since as you mentioned, the thoughts, philosophy, history, and faith put forth in the Hebrew Bible has had a tremendous impact on the world in the last few of thousand years.
- Koa, linguist extraordinaire, I think you’re right so I’ll defer to your judgment. I do believe, however, that our primary language does influence our thoughts some what, if only slightly. I hate to stereotype, but Germans, to me, seem stoic, the French cultured and nuanced the Spanish passionate I’ll leave the Italians to you. I know I shouldn’t have written that last sentence, it was poorly thought out and simple. I’ll open myself up to a thorough thrashing now.
In English, being a mixed language, our legal terms are mostly Latin based; our cultured terms mostly French based (Compliments of the Normans) and our Earthy terms mostly Germanic Anglo (like, well – “earth”) We don’t eat a slice of cow (Anglo) but we consume the cuisine of beef (French based). Cow – Beef, Pig – Pork, Deer – Venison. Hey this is fun.
- AP, how’d you learn so much stuff? Hope you’re feeling better. I read something last week about a new theory in human evolution. Apparently some scientists now believe that about 2.5 million years ago a mutation made the jaw bone of our ancestor’s weaker thus requiring the development of a larger brain.
- Stan, communication without thought; excellent post!
- Verb tenses: certain Native American languages have only one verb tense. However they indicate present tense by pointing to the ground; future tense by pointing to the horizon and past tense by pointing over their shoulder. Which brings up my next question: Do you guys think that some languages are more complex than others? Btw, sorry this post is so disjointed. I’m in a hurry and trying to get out of the door on a 6 day trip. Work stinks
Well sorry but it does seem a bit stereotyped... i really really don't feel that... As i said, in my opinion the influence can be in the way we relate to things and express them... I iwhs I could think of an example of the times when I thought 'hey, this really sounds much better in English', though I DID have that thought in my mind anyway, just I had a poorer way to express it in my language...Quote:
Originally posted by Sancho
- Koa, linguist extraordinaire, I think you’re right so I’ll defer to your judgment. I do believe, however, that our primary language does influence our thoughts some what, if only slightly. I hate to stereotype, but Germans, to me, seem stoic, the French cultured and nuanced the Spanish passionate I’ll leave the Italians to you. I know I shouldn’t have written that last sentence, it was poorly thought out and simple. I’ll open myself up to a thorough thrashing now.
Yeah the English vocabluary is pretty varied, I enjoy to find pairs of word that have the same meaning (unless it changes slightly and noone ever told me) but different root: heaven/paradise (italian: paradiso), wish/desire (italian: desiderio) and so on... :D
I read that also some Asian language don't express the concept of time with senses, but there are no languages that are more advanced than others: all of them can express every concept, in one way or another...at least for the main concepts, cos there are some that are related to the local life... Lots of languages don't have articles, like the slavic ones, but they express the cathegory of determinatess (??? the english 'the') or indeterminatess (the english 'a') in other ways, like putting the subject at the beginning or at the end of the sentence.... and they absolutely dont feel the need of having articles... Languages are so incredibly varied, it's frustrating not to have the possibility to have at least a glimpse of them all...
Thanks Sancho. I don't know Hebrew either, but I have a Jewish friend and things he's mentioned about the language have me really interested in learning it.... I know, I can get quite wordy -- as I've said before, overanalysis is my forte (or weakness. Take your pick). Probably because of the "Celtic knot" thing; one thought doesn't produce another thought, it produces a general feeling encompassing zillions of thoughts. (Hyperbole is my other weakness, btw ;)) Hence, I'm rarely without a strong opinion on a subject.... Anyway, I'm finding this thread fascinating too. Learning so much about languages from Koa, but some of the opinions here, especially, are really thought-provoking.Quote:
Originally posted by Sancho
Great thread! Emily, I enjoyed your post; it was thought provoking for me. You obviously have thought in depth about this subject. Sadly I do not understand Hebrew. I wish I did, since as you mentioned, the thoughts, philosophy, history, and faith put forth in the Hebrew Bible has had a tremendous impact on the world in the last few of thousand years.
And Koa, to add to your comment about Asian languages -- I unfortunately don't know any yet, but my (incredible, miss-him-so-much, prof favorite) high school English teacher said since Chinese characters are mostly literal images, that tenses, adjectives, and most abstract ideas are communicated through the specific arrangements of nouns and verbs. I only have a vague concept of how it must work (I hope I'm not way off), but for instance: the tense of a verb may be determined by the placement of the noun's adjective, or something like that, since there is no change in their appearance or pronunciation. I suppose it's a lot like what you said about Slavic languages and the placement of words substituting for articles. (Sorry, "substituting" sounds sort of demeaning, but -- ironically -- I couldn't think of a better word.)
And just as an afterthought: ...In this sense I can certainly understand how -- while not necessarily the way we think, -- the way we process ideas might sometimes be related to how our language conditions us to think about the world around us. What I mean is... if in the west our thoughts while watching a raging storm at sea might be "passion, fury, embodiment of the power of the universe," and other such abstracts, a person whose language uses literal terms to describe emotion might think things like, "a cold volcanic eruption, a living mountain range, god throwing a tantrum." But just because the images it invokes are technically different, they are connected to the same centers in their respective brains, so the ideas that result are more or less the same. I hope I'm making sense. I'm tired.
No more long ones, I promise. :p
my brother's teaching english in japan, and i have a friend from osaka (O-sa-ka, not o-SAK-a); apparently, learning a multitude of symbols for their two alphabets, plus chinese characters, (plus english lettering in junior high or so) tends to make their brains function more rationally, and so abstract thoughts don't come as second nature quite as often as in other cultures where childhood is spent learning the symbols for one language only.
which isn't to say that the link between language/speech is deficient at all!!!, it's just interesting to note how that affects the whole right/left brain thought pattern.
Interesting. I believe that learning english when you speak spanish is MUCH easier than learning spanish if you speak english, specially the talking part. From what I see, English is a much richer languaje than spanish, but it's more rigid also.Quote:
Originally posted by amuse
it's interesting, one of my best friends is from panama, and i took spanish recently; asked her about the 14 different verb tenses in the spanish language and how hard was it to learn english - she said it feels like it's "missing something" that was the only way she could explain it - and she has a degree in english and teaches both languages to high school students. i wish i had some grasp of what she was getting at, because i had never found my native language lacking...but now i do - a sort of "what if?"
What about the idea of linguistic determinism, that language determins the range of thought a person has. Like the words collateral damage allowing people not to think about deaths and therefore effecting how they treat death.
nobody buys that crap do they really?
I don't see how it could work, it's not language that is shaping thought, but thought that is shaping language. If people didn't just ignore deaths in 3rd world countires then they wouldn't put labels on their death status. Pha.
the american military puts that label on it. quite a blanket statement you made there, btw. it's not people in other countries treating their loved ones with cavalier attitudes, as if they're dead sticks off a tree.
there is still a theory taught in psychology called the "liguistic relativity hypothesis" that outlines basically what you are saying simon; refer to my first post to this thread. it's basically been left in the dust with new research results, but there is still some support for it.
I question the depth of thought originally present in individuals who could be fooled by phrases like "collateral damage." If you know what it means, you think of genocide and fields strewn with corpses. If you don't, you think "I wonder what that means." Is it possible to know that something means "death" and yet train yourself not to think "death" when you hear it?
the pentagon does.
the military uses tons of phrases to describe what you mean emily.
http://www.medialit.org/reading_room/article75.html
http://www.zoran.net/afp/text/zmag/k...oublespeak.htm
like this:
http://www.chiprowe.com/magrev/doublespeak.html
the list goes on. i forget the phrase for air raids, but it's asinine. then again, aren't all the others.
I know. Disturbing, ain't it? This morning I watched a "CNN Presents" about how soldiers are trained to kill. But they don't actually ever "kill;" the correct term is "target acquisition."
The program also said that post-WWII research found that traditional bullseye-target practice resulted in only 25% of soldiers pulling the trigger on another man at the key moment. So the army implimented the use of pop-up targets in the shape of human beings during training, and a similar study during the Vietnam "conflict" revealed that the rate of successful "target acquisition" had risen to nearly 100%. It seems to me that turning death and killing into "collateral damage" and "target acquisition" is the verbal equivalent of turning human beings into pop-up targets -- if you distance yourself from humanity in your head, somehow accountability can be kept at arm's length as well.
So that means that it's really thought allowing us to use language to distance ourselves right?
Or lack thereof.
I consulted my boyfriend (who is a soldier here in Canada and just got back from a tour overseas) and asked him for his input on this whole topic regarding thought and language and the military. he read the thread, and this is what he has to say:
"Some truth to what they are saying, alot of it is politics though, sounding more PC, the lowly soldier rarely uses those terms. that's introduced by the leaders to make it sound more acceptable to the public. Target aquisition is not killing, it's identifying a target; collateral damage is the resultant damage. we use pop up targets for reaction time, and we've been using human shaped targets as long as i've been in the army.
Of course the army wants to distance the human element, or who would do it? If they said "This is your target, his name is Bob, has two kids and before the army was a salesman, now kill him". Of course they want to make it sound as job like as possilbe, that's just common sense.
Also, one of the people talks about how in WWII, only 25% of the soldiers would pull the trigger, which dramatically increased by the Vietnam war. Alot of this has to do with the fact that in WWII, most of the solders were draftees and from Vietnam on they've been mostly volunteers. Makes a big difference"
Um, wasn't it the other way around, though? I don't know the statistics, but at least in the US most WWII soldiers were volunteer, and (at least by the end of the war) most in Vietnam were drafted.Quote:
Originally posted by verybaddmom
Alot of this has to do with the fact that in WWII, most of the solders were draftees and from Vietnam on they've been mostly volunteers. Makes a big difference"
again, I'm directly quoting my boyfriend here (love cut and paste!):
"Negatory there Emily, WW II most were draftees, average age 26, Vietnam mostly volunteers, average age 19. Actually, I was very surprised to find that out as well but it's true."
apparently he wasnt finished!:
"A lot of soldiers from N America, especially the States were draftees due to the fact that a lot of Americans didn't believe in the war, during Vietnam, the average age being so young and previous family histories of being in the military, it was "expected". This all changed of course towards the end of Vietnam with the protests and growing "flowerchild" era."
my dad volunteered for the air force. then again, his reasoning was he didn't want to be drafted to fight in vietnam.
that would've been '67 or '68.
That's really, really interesting. My grandpa was a Lt. Col. in Vietnam '65-'66, but he's never spoken of it in detail, so I know nothing of his army experiences. Except that, a year or two earlier, he was briefly in command of Elvis Presley when he joined the army, and he's quoted in the book "Soldier Boy Elvis." :D But, uhh, that has nothing to do with the war.