Languages and Worldview Textbook PART 3 The Ethnolinguistic Perspective

The Perspective Learning Objectives After completing this module , students will be able to . the concept of linguistic relativity . Differentiate linguistic relativity and linguistic determinism . the Hypothesis ( against more takes on it ) and situate it in a broader theoretical . Provide examples of linguistic relativity through examples related to time , space , metaphors , etc . In this part , we will look at language ( and at the intersection of language thoughts and language cognition ( the mental system with which we process the world around us , and with which we learn to function and make sense of it ) Our main question , which we will not entirely answer but which we will examine in depth , is a chicken and egg one does thought determine language , or does language inform thought ?

We will talk about the Hypothesis look at examples that support the notion of linguistic relativity ( pronouns , kinship terms , grammatical tenses , and what they tell us about culture and worldview ) and then we will more look into how metaphors are a structural component of worldview , if not cognition itself and we will wrap up with memes . Can we analyze memes through an , relativist lens ?

We will try ! Linguistic Relativity The Hypothesis In the , Benjamin was a graduate student studying with linguist Edward at Yale University in New Haven , Connecticut . considered the father of American linguistic anthropology , was responsible for documenting and recording the languages and cultures of many Native American tribes , which were disappearing at an alarming rate . This was due primarily to the deliberate efforts of the United States government to force Native Americans to assimilate into the culture . and his predecessors were well aware of the close relationship between culture and language because each culture is in and its language . Anthropologists need to learn the language of the culture they are studying in order to understand the world View of its speakers . believed that the reverse is also true , that a language affects culture as well , by actually how its speakers think . His hypothesis proposes that the words and the structures of a language how its speakers think about the world , how they behave , and ultimately the culture itself . See our 35

36 of culture in Part I of this document . Simply stated , believed that human beings see the world the way they do because the languages they speak them to do so . He developed this idea through both his work with and his work as a chemical engineer for the Insurance Company investigating the causes of . One of his cases while working for the insurance company was a at a business where there were a number of gasoline drums . Those that contained gasoline were surrounded by signs warning employees to be cautious around them and to avoid smoking near them . The workers were always careful around those drums . On the other hand , empty gasoline drums were stored in another area , but employees were more careless there . Someone tossed a cigarette or lighted match into one of the empty drums , it went up in , and started a that burned the business to the ground . theorized that the meaning of the word empty implied to the worker that nothing was there to be cautious about so the worker behaved accordingly Unfortunately , an empty gasoline drum may still contain fumes , which are more than the liquid itself . studies at Yale involved working with Native American languages , including Hopi . The Hopi language is quite different from English , in many ways . For example , lets look at how the Hopi language deals with time . Western languages ( and cultures ) View time as a river in which we are being carried continuously away from a past , through the present , and into a future . Our verb systems that concept with tenses for past , present , and future . We think of this concept of time as universal , that all humans see it the same way A Hopi speaker has very different ideas and the structure of their language both and shapes the way they think about time . The Hopi language has no present , past , or future tense . Instead , it divides the world into what called the manifested and unmanifest domains . The manifested domain deals with the physical universe , including the present , the immediate past and future the verb system uses the same basic structure for all of them . The unmanifest domain involves the remote past and the future , as well as the world of desires , thought , and life forces . The set of verb forms dealing with this domain are consistent for all of these areas , and are different from the manifested ones . Also , there are no words for hours , minutes , or days of the week . Native Hopi speakers often had great adapting to life in the English speaking world when it came to being on time for work or other events . It is simply not how they had been conditioned to behave with respect to time in their Hopi world , which followed the phases of the moon and the movements of the sun . In a book about the who lived in Vermont in the , Trudy Ann Parker described their concept of time , which very much resembled that of the Hopi and many of the other Native American tribes . They called one full day a sleep , and a year was called a winter . Each month was referred to as a moon and always began with a new moon . An Indian day wasn divided into minutes or hours . It had four time , noon , sunset , and midnight . Each season was determined by the budding or of plants , the spawning of , or the

THE PERSPECTIVE 37 rutting time for animals . Most Indians thought the white race had been running around like scared rabbits ever since the invention of the The lexicon , or vocabulary , of a language is an inventory of the items a culture talks about and has categorized in order to make sense of the world and deal with it effectively . For example , modern life is dictated for many by the need to travel by some kind of , trucks , trains , buses , etc . We therefore have thousands of words to talk about them , including types of vehicles , models , brands , or parts . The most important aspects of each culture are similarly in the lexicon of its language . Among the societies living in the islands of in the , have great economic and cultural importance . This is in the rich vocabulary that describes all aspects of the and the environments that islanders depend on for survival . For example , in there are about species and knew , long before biologists existed , details about the anatomy , behavior , growth patterns , and habitat of most of many cases far more than modern biologists know even today Much of behavior is related to the tides and the phases of the moon . Throughout , the names given to certain days of the lunar months the likelihood of successful . For example , in the Caroline Islands , the name for the night before the new moon is , which means to The name indicates that the best days cluster around the new moon . In i and Tahiti two sets of days have names containing the particle or are one occurs in the quarter of the moon and the other in the third quarter . The same name is given to the prevailing wind during those phases . The words mean nothing , because those days were considered bad for as well as planting . Parts of hypothesis , known as linguistic relativity , were controversial from the beginning , and still are among some linguists . Yet ideas now form the basis for an entire of cultural anthropology cognitive or psychological anthropology . A number of studies have been done that support ideas . Linguist George work looks at the pervasive existence of metaphors in everyday speech that can be said to predispose a speaker world view and attitudes on a variety of human experiences . A metaphor is an expression in which one kind of thing is understood and experienced in terms of another entirely unrelated thing the metaphors in a language can reveal aspects of the culture of its speakers . Take , for example , the concept of an argument . In logic and philosophy , an argument is a discussion involving differing points of view , or a debate . But the conceptual metaphor in American culture can be stated as ARGUMENT IS WAR . This metaphor is in many expressions of the everyday language of American speakers I won the argument . He shot down every point I made . They attacked every argument we made . Your point is right on target . I had a with my boyfriend last night . In other words , we use words appropriate for discussing war when we talk about arguments , which are certainly not real war . But we actually think of arguments as a verbal battle that often involve anger , and even violence , which then structures how we argue .

38 To illustrate that this concept of argument is not universal , suggests imagining a culture where an argument is not something to be won or lost , with no strategies for attacking or defending , but rather as a dance where the dancers goal is to perform in an artful , pleasing way . No anger or violence would occur or even be relevant to speakers of this language , because the metaphor for that culture would be ARGUMENT IS DANCE . Adapted from Perspectives , Language ( Linda , 2017 ) You can either watch the video , How Language Shapes the Way We Think , by linguist , or read the script below . Watch the video How Language Shapes the Way We Think ( 2018 ) There are about languages spoken around the they all have different sounds , and structures . But do they shape the way we think ?

Cognitive scientist shares examples of an Aboriginal community in Australia that uses cardinal directions instead of left and right to the multiple words for blue in suggest the answer is a resounding yes . The beauty of linguistic diversity is that it reveals to us just how ingenious and how the human mind is , says . Human minds have invented not one cognitive universe , but Video transcript So , be speaking to you using language . because I can . This is one these magical abilities that we humans have . We can transmit really complicated thoughts to one another . So what doing right now is , I making sounds with my mouth as exhaling . making tones and hisses and puffs , and those are creating air vibrations in the air . Those air vibrations are traveling to you , they re hitting your eardrums , and then your brain takes those vibrations from your eardrums and transforms them into thoughts . I hope . La I hope that happening . So because of this ability , we humans are able to transmit our ideas across vast reaches of space and time . We re able to transmit knowledge across minds . I can put a bizarre new idea in your mind right now . I could say , Imagine a jellyfish waltzing in a library while thinking about quantum mechanics , La

THE PERSPECTIVE 39 Now , if everything has gone relatively well in your life so far , you probably haven had that thought before . Laughter But now made you think it , through language . Now of course , there isn one language in the world , there are about languages spoken around the world . And all the languages differ from one another in all kinds of ways . Some languages have different sounds , they have different , and they also have different importantly , different structures . That begs the question Does the language we speak shape the way we think ?

Now , this is an ancient question . People have been speculating about this question forever . Holy Roman emperor , said , To have a second language is to have a second statement that language crafts reality . But on the other hand , Shakespeare has Juliet say , What in a name ?

A rose by any other name would smell as Well , that suggests that maybe language doesn craft reality . These arguments have gone back and forth for thousands of years . But until recently , there hasn been any data to help us decide either way , Recently , in my lab and other labs around the world , we started doing research , and now we have actual scientific data to weigh in on this question . So let me tell you about some of my favorite examples . start with an example from an Aboriginal community in Australia that I had a chance to work with , These are the people . They live in at the very west edge of Cape York . cool about is , in , they do use words like left and right , and instead , everything is in cardinal directions north , south , east , and west . And when I say everything , I really mean everything . You would say something like , Oh , there an ant on your southwest Or , Move your cup to the a little bit . In fact , the way that you say hello in is you say , Which way are you going ?

And the answer should be , in the far distance . How about you ?

So imagine as you walking around your day , every person you greet , you have to report your heading direction . La But that would actually get you oriented pretty fast , right ?

Because you literally get past hello , if you didn know which way you were going . In fact , people who speak languages like this stay oriented really well . They stay oriented better than we used to think humans could . We used to think that humans were worse than other creatures because of some biological excuse Oh , we don have magnets in our beaks or in our No if

40 PART your language and your culture trains you to do it , actually , you can do it . There are humans around the world who stay oriented really well . And just to get us in agreement about how different this is from the way we do it , I want you all to close your eyes for a second and point southeast . Laughter Keep your eyes closed . Point . OK , so you can open your eyes . I see you guys pointing there , there , there , there , there . I don know which way it is Laughter You have not been a lot of help . Laughter So just say the accuracy in this room was not very high . This is a big difference in cognitive ability across languages , right ?

Where one distinguished group like you know which way is which , but in another group , I could ask a and they would know , La There are also really big differences in how people think about time . So here I have pictures of my grandfather at different ages . And if I ask an English speaker to organize time , they might lay it out this way , from left to right . This has to do with writing direction . If you were a speaker of Hebrew or Arabic , you might do it going in the opposite direction , from right to left . But how would the , this Aboriginal group Ijust told you about , do it ?

They don use words like left and right , Let me give you hint , When we sat people facing south , they organized time from left to right . When we sat them facing north , they organized time from right to left . When we sat them facing east , time came towards the body . What the pattern ?

East to west , right ?

So for them , time does actually get locked on the body at all , it gets locked on the landscape . So for me , if facing this way , then time goes this way , and if facing this way , then time goes this way . facing this way , time goes this very egocentric of me to have the direction of time chase me around every time I turn my body . For the , time is locked on the landscape . a dramatically different way of thinking about time . Here another really smart human trait , Suppose I ask you how many penguins are there . Well , I bet I know how you solve that problem if you solved it . You went , One , two , three , four , five , six , seven , eight . You counted them . You named each one with a number , and the last number you said was the number of penguins . This is a little trick that you re taught to

THE PERSPECTIVE 41 use as kids . You learn the number list and you learn how to apply it . A little linguistic trick . Well , some languages don do this , because some languages don have exact number words . They re languages that don have a word like seven or a word like In fact , people who speak these languages don count , and they have trouble keeping track of exact quantities . So , for example , if I ask you to match this number of penguins to the same number of ducks , you would be able to do that by counting . But folks who don have that linguistic trait can do that , Languages also differ in how they divide up the color visual world . Some languages have lots of words for colors , some have only a couple words , light and And languages differ in where they put boundaries between colors . So , for example , in English , there a word for blue that covers all of the colors that you can see on the screen , but in Russian , there isn a single word . Instead , Russian speakers have to differentiate between light blue , and dark blue , So Russians have this lifetime of experience of , in language , distinguishing these two colors . When we test people ability to perceptually discriminate these colors , what we find is that Russian speakers are faster across this linguistic boundary . They re faster to be able to tell the difference between alight and a dark blue , And when you look at brains as they re looking at you have colors shifting slowly from light to dark brains of people who use different words for light and dark blue will give a surprised reaction as the colors shift from light to dark , as if , Ooh , something has categorically changed , whereas the brains of English speakers , for example , that do make this categorical distinction , don give that surprise , because nothing is categorically changing . Languages have all kinds of structural quirks . This is one of my favorites . Lots of languages have grammatical gender so every noun gets assigned a gender , often masculine or feminine . And these genders differ across languages . So , for example , the sun is feminine in German but masculine in Spanish , and the moon , the reverse . Could this actually have any consequence for how people think ?

Do German speakers think of the sun as somehow more , and the moon somehow more ?

Actually , it turns out thats the case . So if you ask German and Spanish speakers to , say , describe a bridge , like the one bridge happens to be grammatically feminine in German , grammatically masculine in speakers are more likely to say bridges are beautiful , elegant , and stereotypically feminine words . Whereas Spanish speakers will be more likely to say strong or long , these masculine words . La Languages also differ in how they describe events , right ?

You take an event like this , an accident . In English , it fine to say , He broke the In a language like Spanish , you might be more likely to say , The vase broke , or The vase broke If it an accident , 42 PART you say that someone did it . In English , quite weirdly , we can even say things like , I broke my Now , in lots of languages , you use that construction unless you are a lunatic and you went out looking to break your laughter and you succeeded . If it was an accident , you would use a different construction . Now , this has consequences . So , people who speak different languages will pay attention to different things , depending on what their language usually requires them to do . So we show the same accident to English speakers and Spanish speakers , English speakers will remember who did it , because English requires you to say , He did it he broke the Whereas Spanish speakers might be less likely to remember who did it if it an accident , but they re more likely to remember that it was an accident . They re more likely to remember the intention . So , two people watch the same event , witness the same crime , but end up remembering different things about that event . This has implications , of course , for eyewitness testimony . It also has implications for blame and punishment . So if you take English speakers and Ijust show you someone breaking a vase , and I say , He broke the vase , as opposed to The vase broke , even though you can witness it yourself , you can watch the video , you can watch the crime against the vase , you will punish someone more , you will blame someone more if I just said , He broke it , as opposed to , It The language guides our reasoning about events . Now , I given you a few examples of how language can profoundly shape the way we think , and it does so in a variety of ways . So language can have big effects , like we saw with space and time , where people can lay out space and time in completely different coordinate frames from each other . Language can also have really deep what we saw with the case of number . Having count words in your language , having number words , opens up the whole world of mathematics . Of course , if you do count , you can do algebra , you cant do any of the things that would be required to build a room like this or make this broadcast , right ?

This little trick of number words gives you a stepping stone into a whole cognitive realm , Language can also have really early effects , what we saw in the case of color . These are really simple , basic , perceptual decisions . We make thousands of them all the time , and yet , language is getting in there and fussing even with these tiny little perceptual decisions that we make . Language can have really broad effects . So the case of grammatical gender may be a little silly , but at the same time , grammatical gender applies to all nouns . That means language can shape how you re thinking about anything that can be named by a noun . That a lot of stuff . And finally , I gave you an example of how language can shape things that have personal weight to like blame and punishment or eyewitness memory . These are important things in our daily lives .

THE PERSPECTIVE 43 Now , the beauty of linguistic diversity is that it reveals to how ingenious and how flexible the human mind is . Human minds have invented not one cognitive universe , but are languages spoken around the world . And we can create many , of course , are living things , things that we can hone and change to suit our needs . The tragic thing is that we re losing so much of this linguistic diversity all the time . We re losing about one language a week , and by some estimates , half of the world languages will be gone in the next hundred years . And the even worse news is that right now , almost everything we know about the human mind and human brain is based on studies of usually American undergraduates at universities . That excludes almost all humans . Right ?

So what we know about the human mind is actually incredibly narrow and biased , and our science has to do better . I want to leave you with this final thought . ve told you about how speakers of different languages think differently , but of course , that not about how people elsewhere think . about how you think . how the language that you speak shapes the way that you think . And that gives you the opportunity to ask , Why do I think the way that I do ?

How could I think differently ?

And also , What thoughts do I wish to create ?

Thank you very much , Applause Read the following text on what lexical differences between language can tell us about those languages cultures . Lexical Differences Among Languages Some Reasons Languages Differ So far we have endowed our with an amazing capacity , one that to date has only been found among human beings . Over the generations , they can now invent a very large store of labels for individuals and categories of things in the world ( even categories of things not in the world ) And , equally important , they can pass on this store of labels to their children . Now let imagine various tribes of in different parts of the world with no contact with each other . Each tribe will experience a different environment , containing its own potentially unique set of animals and plants and its own climate and geology . Each tribe will invent words for the things in its environment that matter to it , and we will naturally expect to words for different things in each tribe . Modern languages also differ from each other in this way . has a word for hippopotamus because are found in Ethiopia , but does not because are not found ( normally ) in northern Canada .

44 We can also expect the cultures of the different tribes of to differ . This will result in several differences in their store of words . First , certain naturally occurring things will become more important . A tribe that makes pots out of clay will want a word for clay another tribe may not bother . Second , as culture develops , there will be more and more cultural artifacts , that is , objects produced by the members of the culture . Naturally the tribe will want words for these as well , and if they are not producing them , they will not have such words . Finally , culture results in abstractions , concepts that do not represent ( physical ) things in the world at all political units , social relationships , rituals , laws , and unseen forces . These will vary a great deal in their details from tribe to tribe , and we can expect these differences to be in the words that each tribe comes up with . Culture and Nouns Modern languages also differ from each other in these ways . has the word meaning a basket that Ethiopians used traditionally to carry prepared food when they traveled . Other languages don have a word for this concept . English now has the word nerd to refer to a particular kind of person who is fascinated with technology and lacking in social skills . This is a relatively new concept , to certain cultures , and there is probably no word for it in most languages . Differences Within and Among Languages EXERCISE Languages such as English , Spanish , Mandarin Chinese , and Japanese have many specialized terms for computers and their use , whereas many other languages , such as and , do not . Does this represent some kind of fundamental limitation ofthese languages ?

Finally , we can also expect the store of words to vary among the individuals within each tribe . As culture progresses , experts emerge , people who specialize in agriculture or pottery or music or religion . Each of these groups will invent words that are not known to everyone in the tribe . Modern languages also have this property . A carpenter knows what a hasp is I have no idea . I know what a morpheme is because a linguist , but I don expect most English speakers to know this . This brings up an important distinction , that between the words that a language has and the words that an individual speaker of the language knows . Because some speakers of languages such as Mandarin Chinese , English , Spanish , and Japanese have traveled all over the world and studied the physical environments as well as the cultures they have found , these languages have words for concepts such as hippopotamus and polygamy , concepts that are not part of the everyday life of speakers of these languages . Thus it is almost certainly true that Mandarin Chinese , English , Spanish , and have more words than , and .

THE PERSPECTIVE 45 But this fact is of little interest to linguists and other language scientists , who , if you remember , are concerned with what individual people know about their language ( and sometimes other languages ) and how they use this knowledge . There is no evidence that individual speakers of English or know any more words than individual speakers of or . Where New Words Come From Furthermore , if a language is lacking a word for a particular concept , it is a simple matter for the speakers of the language to add a new word when they become familiar with the concept . One way for this to happen is through semantic extension of an existing word we saw this earlier with mouse in English . Another way is to create a new word out of combinations of old words or pieces of old words we will see how this works in in Chapter and Chapter . A third , very common , way is to simply borrow the word from another language . Thus English speakers borrowed the word algebra from Arabic Japanese speakers borrowed their word for bread , pan , from Portuguese speakers borrowed their word for automobile , from Italian and speakers borrowed their word for chair , from . Lexical Domains Personal Pronouns What are the differences between the personal pronouns you and you guys ?

There are at least two differences . More interesting than isolated differences in the words that are available in different languages is how the concepts within a particular domain are conveyed in different languages . We consider two examples here , personal pronouns and nouns for kinship relations well look at others later on when we discuss words for relations . A complete set of personal pronouns in my dialect of English includes the following I , me , you , she , her , he , him , it , we , us , you guys , they , them . Note that I writing you guys as two words , but in most important ways it behaves like one word . For our present purposes , we can ignore the following group me , her , him , us , them were not really ready to discuss how they differ from the others . Among the ones that are left , let consider how they differ from each other . We have already seen how they differ with respect to person I and we are person you and you guys are second person she , he , it , and they are third person . We can View person as a dimension , a kind of scale along which concepts can vary . Each concept that varies along the dimension has a value for that dimension . The person dimension has only three possible values , second , and third , and each personal pronoun has one of these values . Person is not just a conceptual dimension it is a semantic dimension because the different values are in different linguistic forms . That is , like words , semantic dimensions have both form and meaning . When we speak of person , we may be talking about form , for example ,

46 the difference between the word forms I and you , about meaning , for example , the difference between Speaker and Hearer , or about the association between form and meaning . But person alone is not enough to account for all of the differences among the pronouns . It does not distinguish I from we , for example . These two words differ on another semantic dimension , number . I is singular it refers to an individual . We is plural it refers to more than one individual . What values are possible on the number dimension ?

Of course languages have words for all of the different numbers , but within the personal pronouns , there seem to be only the following possibilities singular , dual ( two individuals ) trial ( three individuals ) and plural ( multiple individuals ) Of these trial is very rare , and , among our set of nine languages , dual is used only in . Thus has three person pronouns , I , we ( two people ) we ( more than two people ) Given the two dimensions of person and number , we can divide up the English personal pronouns as shown in the table below . The third person pronouns fall into the singular group of three , she , he , and it , and the single plural pronoun they . The second person is more complicated . In relatively formal speech and writing , we use you for both singular and plural , but informally , at least in my dialect , we may also use you guys for the plural . Note that other English dialects have other second person plural pronouns , you ull , etc . Thus we need to include both you and you guys in the plural column . Singular Plural person I we person you you , you guys person she , he , it they Clearly , we need more dimensions to distinguish the words since two of the cells in our table contain more than one word . Among the third person singular pronouns , the remaining difference has to do with gender , whether the referent is being viewed as male , female , or neither . Instead of male and female , I will use the conventional linguistic terms masculine and feminine to emphasize that we are dealing with linguistic categories rather than biological categories in the world , and for the third value I will use neuter . Thus , there are three possible values on the gender dimension for English , and three seems to be all that is needed for other languages , though some languages have a dimension similar to gender that has many more values . That leaves the distinction between you and you guys in the plural . As we have already seen , this is related to formality , another semantic dimension and a very complicated one . I will have little to say about it here , except that it is related to the larger context ( not just the utterance context ) and to the relationship between the Speaker and Hearer . For example , language is likely to be relatively formal in the context of a public speech or when people talk to their employers . For

THE PERSPECTIVE 47 now , lets assume that the formality dimension has only two Values , informal and formal . The table below shows the breakdown of the English personal pronouns along the four dimensions of person , number , gender , and formality . Singular Plural person I we person you formal informal you you guys person feminine masculine neuter they she he it Gaps in Pronoun Systems Notice that there seem to be gaps in the English system . There is a word for third person singular feminine , but no word for second person singular feminine , and formality is only relevant for second person plural . Because there is no masculine or feminine you in English , we can say that you is for the gender dimension . As we will see many times in the book , languages tend to be they make a distinction somewhere , they tend to make that distinction they are not always so . English personal pronouns are systematic in one important way the distinction between first , second , and third person is maintained in both singular and plural . But they are not in other ways , as we have just seen . You will probably not be surprised to learn that there is nothing special about the English system other languages organize things somewhat differently , though it seems that person and number are relevant for all languages . Here is the set of personal pronouns . Singular Plural person person plain respect feminine masculine ante person plain respect feminine masculine Notice that some of the apparent gaps that English has for example , there is both a masculine and a feminine second person singular pronoun , while English only makes the gender distinction in third person . But is unsystematic in some ways too while gender

48 is relevant for singular pronouns , it is not for plural pronouns , and , as in English , it doesn enter into person at all . Notice also that there is a new dimension , respect , that is relevant for pronouns , at least in second and third person singular . Respect is similar to formality , but it relates to the attitude that the Speaker wants to convey toward the referent , that is , the Hearer in the case of second person and another person in the case of third person . In , there are two values for this dimension , plain and respectful . Finally , notice that while English has three values for gender , has only two , masculine and feminine . This means that one or the other of these must make do to refer to things that are neither male nor female . Many languages have only two genders , and each of these languages has its own way of determining which gender is appropriate for things that don have natural gender . We have seen only two examples of personal pronoun systems . Other languages have quite different systems , some making use of dimensions that are not relevant for English or , some ignoring dimensions that matter for English and . For example , in many languages , including and , gender plays no role at all in the personal pronoun systems there is no distinction like that between he and she . It is not clear why pronoun systems vary the way they do . For example , it would be wrong to assume that pronouns lack gender because speakers are less conscious of gender in the world or that children learning become less sensitive to gender differences than children learning English or or Spanish . At least there is no evidence for these kinds of relationships . The relationship between language and thought has been most often studied in the context of grammar , and since we are looking at personal pronouns , we are getting pretty close to grammar , but we will save this topic for later . Lexical Domains Kinship Terms What do the meanings of the words father and uncle have in common ?

What sort of dimension would you need to distinguish the meanings of these words ?

Now lets look at the words we use to refer to kinship relations . We won consider all of the words in a given language , just some of the basic ones . Lets start by taking two similar words and trying to out what dimension distinguishes their meanings , say brother and sister . This is easy since we ve already been discussing this dimension it gender . But gender won help us with the distinction between daughter and mother since both are female . For these words we have to consider their relationship to the person who provides the reference point for the relationship , what cultural anthropologists ( the experts on this topic ) call ego . In both cases , there is a direct relationship ( what anthropologists call lineal ) but in one case the relationship goes in one direction ( back into the past ) in the other , it goes in the opposite direction ( forward into the future ) Let call this dimension vertical separation from

THE PERSPECTIVE 49 We can use positive and negative numbers to represent values on this dimension . In the case of mother , the separation is ( one generation back ) in the case of daughter , it is ( one generation forward ) But these two dimensions won to distinguish all basic English kinship terms . What about mother and aunt ?

Both are female , and both are separated by from ego . What distinguishes these two relations is the closeness of the relationship to ego . For mother , the person is in a lineal relation to ego . For aunt , we need to go back another generation , to ego grandparents , to a common ancestor . We will call this dimension horizontal distance from ego and represent it again with a number ( but no sign ) For mother , we will say the distance is for aunt ( and cousin and niece ) it is . Here is a list of some English kinship terms with their values on the three dimensions . If a cell is left blank , the dimension is for that term . Vertical Horizontal Gender mother feminine daughter feminine sister feminine aunt feminine parent grandchild niece feminine cousin Not All Languages Have Aunts and Uncles Now lets look at some of the terms that speakers use for kinship terms . Some of these are just like English , but others require different dimensions than are required for English . speakers use different words for siblings that are older or younger than ego and for aunts and uncles that are older or younger than their parents , but they don normally distinguish siblings or aunts and uncles by gender . We refer to this as the relative age dimension . speakers also distinguish maternal and paternal aunts and uncles we call this the parent path dimension . Finally , speakers use the same words for grandparents and grandchildren that is , at least some of the time they are concerned only with vertical distance , not vertical direction ( earlier or later ) The table below shows values on the kinship dimensions for some kinship terms .

50 Vertical Horizontal Gender Parent Path Age mama feminine maternal mother tam masculine paternal father ( grandchild older older sibling younger younger sibling maternal older older sibling of mother paternal younger younger sibling of father Differences in kinship terms are more likely to be related to culture than differences in personal pronouns . That is , when a single term ( such as older sibling ) groups different relatives together , we might expect that in the culture where the is spoken , those relatives are treated similarly by ego . I don know whether this is the case for speakers , however . Words refer to categories , after all , and categories are a way in which people group the things in the world . Children growing up in a particular culture are learning the cultural concepts and the words simultaneously . Their experience with the culture should help them learn the words referring to cultural concepts , and their exposure to the words should help them learn the concepts . But little is actually known about how this sort of interaction works . In the next section we consider the learning of the meanings of apparently simpler nouns , those referring to physical objects . Even here Well discover that there is considerable disagreement on how babies manage to master the words . Adapted from Lexical Differences Among Languages ( Gasser , 2015 )

THE PERSPECTIVE 51 Watch this brief Video on the translation challenges associated with the pronoun Watch the video One of the Most Words to Translate . 2016 ) Video transcript Which is the hardest word to translate in this sentence ?

Do you know where the pep rally is ?

Know is easy to translate , Pep doesn have a direct analog in a lot of languages and cultures , but can be approximated . But the hardest word there is actually one of the smallest As simple as it seems , it often impossible to accurately translate you without knowing a lot more about the situation where it being said . To start with , how familiar are you with the person you re talking to ?

Many cultures have different levels of formality . A close friend , someone much older or much younger , a stranger , a boss . These all may be slightly different you In many languages , the pronoun reflects these differences through what known as the distinction . In French , for example , you would say tu when talking to your friend at school , but vous when addressing your teacher . Even English once had something similar . Remember the thou ?

Ironically , it was actually the informal pronoun for people you re close with , while you was the formal and polite version . That distinction was lost when the English decided be polite all the time . But the difficulty in translating you does end there . In languages like or , the you form depends on the listener gender . In many more , it depends on whether they are one or many , such as with German du or Even in English , some dialects use words like or youse the same way . Some plural forms , like the French vous and Russian are also used for a single person to show that the addressee is that much more important , much like the royal And a few languages even have a specific form for addressing exactly two people , like Slovenian . If that wasn complicated enough , formality , number , and gender can all come into play at the same time . In Spanish , tu is unisex informal singular , usted is unisex formal singular , is masculine informal plural , is feminine informal plural , and ustedes is the unisex formal plural . Phew ! After all that , it may come as a relief that some languages often leave out the second person pronoun . In languages like Romanian and Portuguese , the pronoun can be dropped from sentences because its clearly implied by the way the verbs are conjugated . And in languages like Korean , Thai , and Chinese , pronouns can be dropped without any grammatical hints . Speakers often would rather have the listener guess the pronoun from context than use the wrong one and risk being seen as rude .

52 PART So if you re ever working as a translator and come across this sentence without any context You and you , no , not you , you , is to translate you for yourselves . Well , good luck . And to the volunteer community who will be translating this video into multiple languages Uh , sorry about that ! EXERCISE Pick one of two options . You want to work on kinship systems Pick one of the following kinship diagrams ( below ) and apply it to your own family system , or that of a famous individual . Describe what you family system would look like in that society Specify who you would call an aunt , and who you would call a father in this system . Pro tip For more fun , pick a kinship system you know nothing about , and that is far from your own . Specify what kind of social structure is implied in this system ( Are elders important ?

is it more patriarchal or matriarchal ?

You want to work on personal pronoun systems , and you want to do some research Pick a language of your choice ( it can be English , from a historical perspective , from Shakespeare and before , to today shifting pronoun systems ) Describe that pronoun system , and explain how this pronoun system differs from the English one ( you may want to create a table to do that ) Explain what societal values and beliefs this pronoun systems implies ( remember , we are working from a , not a , perspective ) Here are some kinship systems to work from Hawaiian Kinship Kinship Father Mother Mother Father Father Mother is . Sudanese Kinship ster Brother sister Brother sister Ego Brother sister Brother sister A ) A sister Brother , Fa Cousin Sister Brother Sister go Brother sister cousin uncle Mather Mother Father Father Aunt sister Ego Aunt Father Eskimo Kinship Uncle Mother Father uncle cousin cousin Cousin sister Ego Omaha Kinship Father Father Mother Uncle sister Ego Cousin FIGURE . A broad comparison of ( left , top to bottom ) Hawaiian , Sudanese , Eskimo , right , top to bottom ) Crow , and Omaha kinship systems . By Own work , based on information from Systematic Kinship ,

THE 53 The diagrams show a comparison ofthe six major kinship systems ( Hawaiian , Sudanese , Eskimo , Crow , and Omaha ) Circle female , triangle male . Relatives marked with the same color are called by the same kinship term ( ignoring differentiation in the generation , except where this becomes structurally relevant under the Crow and Omaha systems ) Note that in some versions of the Crow and Omaha systems , the relatives shown as cousin in the Crow and Omaha boxes of the chart are actually referred to as either or ( different terms are used by male ego female ego ) Also , in some languages with an type of system , the relatives shown as cousin on the chart are referred to by the same terms used for ( since such remote classificatory preferred marriage partners ) Similarly , the term for fathers sister can be the same as that for , and the term for mothers brother the same as . The terms used for ego generation ( the generation ) are usually considered critical for classifying a languages kinship terms ( some languages show discrepancies between ego generation patterns and generation patterns ) In anthropological terminology , the basic generation patterns are actually called generational ( shown in Hawaiian box ) shown in Eskimo box ) bifurcate collateral ( shown in Sudanese box ) and bifurcate merging ( shown in the , Crow , and Omaha boxes ) Are You Familiar with Memes ?

That meme , when even Google can help you with your homework . This weeks discussion board will be a fun , practical activity requiring you to connect the concepts we have been learning to an Internet phenomenon . EXERCISE A . Read this brief article about the history and definition of Internet memes FIGURE 32 . Picture of Community character Shirley Bennett , Top text That moment when even Google can help you with a your homework . Bottom text The lord is testing I and this one on Chinese memes

54 . Now , create your own meme . Connect your memes to at least one concept we have studied so far , and explain how this concept can help you understand memes as a or phenomenon . Further if you are interested Supplemental article by Linda Makes a Meme Instead A Concise History of Internet Memes Watch the Video Language Thought ?

Let , 2015 ) Video transcript The chicken or the egg ?

Which one came first ?

This question has puzzled humanity for a long time . Linguists ask themselves a similar question . Do we think before we speak , or do we need language to shape our thoughts ?

Two famous linguists have worked on what is called linguistic relativity , Edward and Benjamin have separately worked on this problem and came to the conclusion that the structure of one language affects the way in which we perceive the world . Our shape the linguistic structures of our respective languages , influencing thoughts and modeling linguistic behavior . Whether linguistic relativity exists or not has been and still is heavily disputed amongst linguists . At the beginning of the century in the early stages of linguistic relativity , and looked for clues to find out whether language determines thought or thoughts determine language . Around 1960 when the Universalist Theory of Language became popular , the relativity theory was heavily criticized since believed linguistic structures to be innate and all cognitive processes to be universal in human beings and therefore not influenceable by language . most famous argument in favor of linguistic relativity was what he believed to be a major difference in the concept of time in Hopi languages compared to English . He claimed that Hopi speakers do not have the same temporal units , and therefore their culture was fundamentally different in its respect to ours . Of course this theory was disputed by . Their studies demonstrated that Hopi had different concepts of time than what

THE PERSPECTIVE 55 had believed them to be and claimed that did not understand Hopi languages well enough . Other however countered , arguing that universalist misinterpreted work and tried to force Hopi grammar into models that were not fit for the structure of the Hopi language . In the , a study was set up to discredit the relativistic approach . At that time it was believed there was no specific rule which determined between how many different colors a language would differentiate . Rather , differences were attributed to the culture in which languages were spoken . Berlin and Kay examined the color terminology of different languages and found Universalist trends even though languages have different color terms certain hues are seen as more focal than others , Also , the choices of colors are not arbitrary , Instead there appears to be a hierarchy of colors . A language which recognizes the color blue also recognizes the colors black , white , red , green , and yellow , but not necessarily brown or pink . If speakers don recognize the colors green or yellow , the only colors that speakers of this language categorize are either black and white only or black , white , and red . These observations were seen as a powerful argument for the Universalist theory , In the view of John Lucy , a relativist , is the word of Berlin and Kay had methodological shortcomings and was biased by the Western point of view . He conducted a different kind of experiment . He compared Mayan and English . He showed speakers of each language single objects and afterwards two different objects one with the same shape but different material and the other one in the same material but differently shaped . Which one of the two objects is more similar to the first one ?

English speakers tended to choose the object with the same shape , whereas speakers or the material of the object as a more decisive factor . But why was there such a difference ?

Mayan uses , a specific linguistic device to categorize different nouns by shape . In his experiment , however , the questions were asked in a way that such did not apply . The objects were shapeless to the speakers . Recently , relativist studies have focused on and who speak two or more test the possibility of language shaping thought . But why in particular ?

If different language has changed the way we think and perceive the world , who speak two languages might think differently when language A is activated compared to when language is active . If we go back to the prior example of shape versus interior , how would a person who is brought up speaking both English and Mayan answer the question , Which object is more similar to the first one ?

Linguists have found differences in the language use of 56 PART and when describing colors , motion , time or space , but why is that ?

Aren supposed to speak either language like a native speaker ?

It is not that easy . One theory claims that language systems which are storing our minds are not entirely separated from each other . They overlap , Instead of the two languages being independent from each other , they are interconnected and share certain features . This phenomenon is called merging . If two or more language systems merge , it is possible that certain features in one language are dropped in favor of features of the other language . Merging of language systems has , for example , been found in semantics of Russian English speakers as well as in French speakers . Also , definitions of certain words and phrases can be broadened or limited . This is what linguists call boundary shifting , which will be shown with the following example A particular study on color perception in 2010 examined the change in the perception of the color blue in Greek speakers . English has one concept for blue . Greek has two one describing light blue and the other one describing a dark blue . Two groups of Greek speakers were formed . Participants in the first group had lived in an country for a much longer time than participants in the second group , The question was , would their perception of color differ from each other ?

It did ! Greeks who had had a longer exposure to the English language learned to separate when it came to distinguishing the two types of blue they knew from their first language , So had English influenced their view of the world so that they did not see colors in the way they had before ?

Do we think before we speak ?

Or do we need language to shape our thoughts ?

is language in its structure already innate and does not influence our thoughts , or is it true that even though we are able to understand how others think we are not able to actually think in that way because our languages are different ?

What is your opinion ?

Do we think before we speak , or do we need language to shape our thoughts ?