“We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages” – Whorf
The above quote was written by Benjamin Lee Whorf, a linguist and pupil of Edward Sapir, and is widely associated with the ‘Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis’. What the ‘Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis’ actually states seems to be up for as much debate at whether or not it is true. ... In ‘The Language Instinct’ Steven Pinker describes these to different interpretations of the ‘Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis’ as the ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ versions. ...
There are those who dismiss the hypothesis no matter which version you use. ...
Whorf, himself, has a number of examples to back up his claim. ...
‘…the Hopi language is seen to contain no words, grammatical forms, constructions or expressions that refer directly to what we call ‘time’, or to the past, present or future…Hence I find it gratuitous to assume that Hopi thinking contains any such notion as the supposed intuitively felt flowing of time…’
It seems, however, that Whorf only studied the Hopi language and not the Hopi themselves. ...
This is the fundamental problem that experimenters come up against when attempting to test the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. ... Pinker asserted that the perception of colour is purely physical and that:
‘No matter how influential language might be, it would seem preposterous to a physiologist that it could reach down and rewire the ganglion cells’
There are also arguments that the colour perception should not be used to test the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis at all. D Alford believes that Wharf never intended it to be used to defend his hypothesis saying that ‘In fact, he is quite clear in stating that perception in clearly distinct from conception and cognition, or language related thinking’ . ... However, it should be noted that this experiment was not originally designed to test the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis’ and that it is only a small number of children who have been tested.
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