Editing Linguistic determinism (section)

==Evidence and criticisms==
=== Hopi ===
{{main|Hopi time controversy}}

Whorf's conclusion was largely based upon a close examination and extensive study of the Native American [[Hopi]] language spoken among natives of southwestern North America. During earlier years, Whorf published a number of essays in which he analyzed various linguistic aspects of Hopi. For example, a work called "An American Indian model of the universe" (1936) explores the implications of the Hopi verb system concerning the conception of space and time.

In the course of his research, Whorf noticed that Hopi and some other languages ([[Hebrew]], [[Aztec]], and [[Mayan languages|Maya]]) were built upon a different structure than that of English and many other languages which he called SAE ([[Standard Average European]]) languages. He discovered several significant features distinguishing Hopi from SAE languages which he used to continue formulating his concept of linguistic determinism.

For example, Hopi is a "timeless" language, whose verbal system lacks tenses. The assessment of time is different from the SAE linear temporal view of past, present, and future because it indicates the event's time duration.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Hopi language|url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hopi-language|access-date=2021-05-12|website=Encyclopedia Britannica|language=en|archive-date=2021-01-23|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210123055326/https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hopi-language|url-status=live}}</ref>  Whorf observed that sense of time varies with each observer:

{{blockquote|The timeless Hopi verb does not distinguish between the present, past and future of the event itself but must always indicate what type of validity the speaker intends the statement to have.<ref name="Whorf, B.L. 1956 pp. 217">Whorf, B.L. (1956). "Science and Linguistics". In Carroll, J.B. Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. pp. 217. {{ISBN|0-262-73006-5}}</ref>}}

Hopi time is non-dimensional and cannot be counted or measured in typical SAE language measurement, i.e. the Hopi will not say "I stayed six days," but "I left on the sixth day." In the Hopi perception of time, it is crucial to determine whether an event can be warranted to have occurred, to be occurring, or to be expected to occur. Hopi grammatical categories signify a view of the world as an ongoing process, where time is not divided into fixed segments so that certain things recur, e.g. minutes, evenings, or days. The linguistic structure of SAE languages, on the other hand, gives its speakers a more fixed, objectified and measurable understanding of time and space, where they distinguish between countable and uncountable objects and view time as a linear sequence of past, present, and future.

The Hopi language also contains a verb system which, unlike SAE languages, can make a single-action verb into a repeated/prolonged action verb with an extension of the word. For example, "tíri" translates to "he gives a start" but "tirírita" becomes "he is trembling".<ref name=":3" />

Whorf argues that since thought is expressed and transmitted through language, it follows that a differently structured language must shape thought along its lines, thus influencing perception. Consequently, a Hopi speaker who perceives the world through the medium of his language must see reality through the patterns laid down by its linguistic structure.

An outspoken critic of linguistic determinism, cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, known for his alignment with Chomsky's universalist ideas, disagrees strongly with Whorf's analysis. Pinker argued that Whorf relied too heavily on linguistic data alone to draw conclusions regarding the relationship between language and thought. In his book, The Language Instinct, Pinker dismisses linguistic determinism as a "conventional absurdity," instead proposing a universal language of thought – termed Mentalese.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book|last=Pinker|first=Steven|title=The Language Instinct|publisher=William Morrow and Company|year=1994|isbn=0-688-12141-1|location=New York|pages=55–82}}</ref>

He asserts that Whorf was completely mistaken in his characterization of the Hopi as having no concept of time and that the Hopi do in fact have tense, units of time, temporal metaphors, and a complex system of time-keeping.<ref name=":2" />

=== Guugu Yimithirr ===
Linguist [[Guy Deutscher (linguist)|Guy Deutscher]], a supporter of [[linguistic relativity]] – the weaker counterpart of linguistic determinism – used research among the Guugu Yimithirr to challenge the validity of linguistic determinism. While linguistic relativists believe that language influences thought, they do not support the concept that language is a permanent lens through which all thoughts must be filtered. In Deutscher's book ''Through the Language Glass'', the chapter "Where the Sun Doesn't Rise in the East" discusses the language [[Guugu Yimithirr language|Guugu Yimithirr]] spoken by aboriginal Australians and how it reinforces linguistic relativity.

Deutscher introduces the Guugu Yimithirr language, where they describe everything geocentrically based on its cardinal direction (the chair is to the East) rather than egocentrically (the chair is to your right). It is clear how this system of expressing position and location influenced the Guugu Ymithirr's conceptualization of space. Their description of objects' locations, within photos or on television, would change based on the rotation of  the media because they described things using cardinal directions. For example, if there was a photograph with a tree on the left side of the photo and a girl on the right side, the speakers of Guugu Yimithirr would describe the tree as West of the girl. If the photo was then rotated 90 degrees clockwise the tree would now be described as North of the girl.

The implications, as Deutscher describes, were that the speakers of Guugu Yimithirr have a "perfect pitch" for direction and that their sense of direction is completely non-egocentric. In one experiment, speakers were asked to recall a very recent event and describe it. The people recalled their placement, as well as the placement of important people and objects around them perfectly, even accounting for their position in the retelling. Many years later, the same people were asked to recall that same event, and it was shown that over time, they were still able to accurately recall the directionality of objects and people. Deutscher argues that this example illustrates that geocentric direction is encoded into the memories of Guugu Ymithirr because their language requires it. More broadly, they see the world differently due to their unique conceptualization of space, but this does not mean that they are trapped within the constraints of their language.<ref name="Deutscher, Guy 2016">Deutscher, Guy. Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages. Cornerstone Digital, 2016.</ref>

In an interview about his work, Deutscher condemned Whorf's strong concept of linguistic relativism because there is no evidence that language can truly restrict the ability to reason or to gain knowledge. Even if languages do not provide "ready made labels" for certain concepts or objects, most people are still able to understand and discuss these ideas.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Silva|first=Mark de|date=2010-11-09|title=Guy Deutscher on 'Through the Language Glass'|url=https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2010/11/09/guy-deutscher-on-%e2%80%98through-the-language-glass%e2%80%99/|access-date=2021-05-12|website=The Paris Review|language=en|archive-date=2021-05-12|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210512010412/https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2010/11/09/guy-deutscher-on-%E2%80%98through-the-language-glass%E2%80%99/|url-status=live}}</ref>

=== Pirahã ===
Similar to the claims that Hopi prevents its speakers from thinking about time, some linguists allege that the [[Pirahã language]] spoken by natives in South American Amazonia prevents its speakers from thinking about quantity and numbers.<ref name="Frank, Michael C. 2008, pp. 819">Frank, Michael C., et al. "Number as a Cognitive Technology: Evidence from Pirahã Language and Cognition." Cognition, vol. 108, no. 3, 2008, pp. 819–824., {{doi|10.1016/j.cognition.2008.04.007}}.</ref><ref>Everett, Caleb, and Keren Madora. "Quantity Recognition Among Speakers of an Anumeric Language." Cognitive Science, vol. 36, no. 1, Mar. 2011, pp. 130–141., {{doi|10.1111/j.1551-6709.2011.01209.x}}.</ref> The speakers of Pirahã are also, for the most part, incapable of math.{{cn|date=August 2024}}

Peter Gordon, a psychologist from Columbia University, studied the speakers of the Pirahã language. He has conducted many experiments on a small representative number of these speakers. Gordon highlights eight experiments involving seven Pirahã speakers. Six of the experiments were all related in that the speakers were instructed to match groups of items to the correct number displayed elsewhere. The other two experiments had them recall how many items had been placed into a container, and lastly differentiate between various containers by the number of symbols that were pictured on the outside. Gordon found that the speakers of Pirahã could distinguish between the numbers one, two, and three relatively accurately, but any quantity larger than that was essentially indistinguishable to them. He also observed that the more the amount represented by the number increased, the poorer the subjects performed. Gordon concluded, in direct contrast to Deutscher, that speakers of Pirahã are restricted to thinking about numbers through symbols or other representations. These speakers think of items as small, larger, or many.<ref>Margolis, Eric. "Linguistic Determinism and the Innate Basis of Number." https://www.margolisphilosophy.com/linguistic-determinism-and-the-innate-basis-of-number.html {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191203075250/https://www.margolisphilosophy.com/linguistic-determinism-and-the-innate-basis-of-number.html |date=2019-12-03 }}.</ref> The speakers did not demonstrate an ability to learn numbers; after being taught in the Portuguese language for eight months, not one individual could count to ten.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bower |first1=Bruce |title=The pirahá challenge: An Amazonian tribe takes grammar to a strange place |journal=Science News |date=2005 |volume=168 |issue=24 |pages=376–377 |doi= 10.2307/4017032 |jstor=4017032 }}</ref>

[[Daniel Everett]], a linguist who also studied the Pirahã, claimed that the Pirahã language also lacks recursion or nesting – the term which describes the ability of a finite set of grammatical rules to create an infinite combination of expressions and was previously thought to be a feature of all languages.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Vries |first1=Meinou de |last2=Christiansen |first2=Morten |last3=Petersson |first3=Karl Magnus |date=2011-06-27 |title=Learning Recursion: Multiple Nested and Crossed Dependencies |url=https://bioling.psychopen.eu/index.php/bioling/article/view/8825 |journal=Biolinguistics |language=en |volume=5 |issue=1–2 |pages=010–035 |doi=10.5964/bioling.8825 |issn=1450-3417 |oclc=1136601797 |access-date=2024-02-13 |archive-date=2023-10-18 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231018132739/https://bioling.psychopen.eu/index.php/bioling/article/view/8825 |url-status=live |hdl=11858/00-001M-0000-0012-CDE2-E |hdl-access=free }}</ref> This argument includes the possibility that the thoughts of the speakers are influenced by their language in various ways as well. Whether or not Pirahã lacks recursion remains a topic of intense debate and linguistic determinism has been widely criticized for its absolutism and refuted by linguists.<ref>Evans, Nicholas, and Stephen C. Levinson. "The Myth of Language Universals: Language Diversity and Its Importance for Cognitive Science." Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 32, no. 5, 2009, pp. 429–448., {{doi|10.1017/s0140525x0999094x}}.</ref>

One such argument comes from Michael Frank et al. who continued Daniel Everett's research and ran further experiments on the Pirahã published in "Numbers as a cognitive technology," and found that Everett was wrong, the Pirahã did not have words for "one," or "two," but instead had words for "small," "somewhat larger," and "many."

For example, one may perceive different colors even while missing a particular word for each shade, like New Guinea aborigines can distinguish between the colors green and blue even though they have only one lexical entry to describe both colors.<ref name="Masharov, Mikhail 2006">Masharov, Mikhail (2006). "Linguistic relativity: does language help or hinder perception?" Current Biology, {{ISSN|0960-9822}}, Vol: 16, Issue: 8, Page: R289-91</ref> In communities where language does not exist to describe color, it does not mean the concept is void – rather the community may have a description or unique phrase to determine the concept. Everett describes his research into the Pirahã tribe who use language to describe color concepts in a different way to English speakers: "[...] each word for color in Pirahã was actually a phrase. For example, biísai did not mean simply 'red'. It was a phrase that meant 'it is like blood'."<ref>Everett, D. (2013). Language, Culture and Thinking. London: Profile Books.</ref>

Thus, in its strong version 'Whorfian hypothesis' of linguistic determination of cognition has been widely refuted. In its weaker form, however, the proposal that language influences thinking has frequently been discussed and studied.<ref name="Masharov, Mikhail 2006" />

=== Additional examples ===
Linguistic determinism can also be evident in situations where the means of drawing attention to a certain aspect of an experience is language. For example, in French, Spanish or Russian there are two ways to address a person because those languages have two second-person pronouns – singular and plural. The choice of pronoun depends on the relationship between the two people (formal or informal) and the degree of familiarity between them. In this respect, the speaker of any of those languages is always thinking about the relationship when addressing another person and therefore unable to separate those two processes.<ref>Comrie, Bernard (2012). "Language and Thought." Linguistic Society of America Linguistic Society of America. https://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/language-and-thought {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210227025410/https://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/language-and-thought |date=2021-02-27 }}</ref>

Other studies supporting the principle of linguistic determinism have shown that people find it easier to recognize and remember shades of colors for which they have a specific name.<ref>{{cite book|last=D'Andrade|first=Roy|title=The development of cognitive anthropology|year=1995|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=New York|isbn=9780521459761}}</ref> For example, there are two words in Russian for different shades of blue, and Russian-speakers are faster at discriminating between the shades than are English-speakers.<ref>Winawer, Jonathan (2007). "Russian blues reveal effects of language on color discrimination." PNAS. 104 (19) 7780–7785; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0701644104</ref>

Pinker criticizes this argument for linguistic determinism as well. He points out that although a plethora of languages label colors differently, this variation in language cannot change the human biological process of color perception; he also notes that there are universal tendencies in the color labels that languages possess (i.e. if a language has two terms, they will be for white and black; with three terms, add red; with four, add either yellow or green).<ref name=":2" />

Pinker thinks everybody thinks in the same language known as Mentalese and knowledge of a particular language constitutes the ability to translate this Mentalese into a string of words for the sake of communication.<ref name=":2" />

=== General semantics ===
[[General Semantics|General semantics]] was a therapy program created by Polish-American scholar [[Alfred Korzybski]] in the 1920s for the purpose of altering behavior.<ref name="Korzybski, Alfred 2005">Korzybski, Alfred. Science and Sanity: an Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics. Institute of General Semantics, 2005.</ref> It has been regarded as a reliable method and produced effective results concerning altering behavior.

Language acts as the basis for behavioral therapy; the methods used are based on the idea that language influences human thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Korzybski's program assumes that people misappropriate language, creating damaging effects. By clarifying language, participants create a more accurate mental representation, which in turn creates an emotional response.

As such, the general idea behind general semantics is to alter your language to change the feelings created within the mind-space, so as to elicit the desired response. According to Korzybski, the mind consists of different silent and verbal levels. On the nonverbal level, there exist feelings, thought, and nervous system responses, and on the verbal level there are language systems.<ref>{{Cite web|title=General semantics {{!}} philosophy|url=https://www.britannica.com/science/general-semantics|access-date=2021-05-12|website=Encyclopedia Britannica|language=en|archive-date=2021-05-12|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210512022330/https://www.britannica.com/science/general-semantics|url-status=live}}</ref> He instructs people to understand any given word as just a lexical representation and nothing more and to react accordingly. This is to avoid misappropriation of thoughts and feelings attached to any one thing. Because this program has been shown to produce effective results, this has large implications that language determines thought, supporting linguistic determinism.

=== Eric Lenneberg and Roger Brown (1954) ===
Psycholinguists [[Eric Lenneberg]] and Roger Brown were among the first to refute [[Benjamin Lee Whorf|Whorf]]'s ideas of linguistic determinism. They identify Whorf's major ideas as (a) the world is experienced differently by speakers of different languages and (b) language is causally linked to these cognitive differences.<ref name=":0" /> They explore the two types of evidence Whorf uses to argue for the existence of cognitive differences between linguistic communities: lexical differences and structural differences.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|last1=Brown|first1=Roger W.|last2=Lenneberg|first2=Eric H.|date=1954|title=A study in language and cognition.|journal=The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology|language=en|volume=49|issue=3|pages=454–462|doi=10.1037/h0057814|pmid=13174309|issn=0096-851X}}</ref>

==== Lexical differences ====
Lenneberg and Brown analyze the example of [[Inuit words for snow|Inuit snow terms]]. They claim that their three distinct terms for what English speakers would simply call "snow" do not indicate that English speakers cannot perceive these differences, but rather that they just do not label them. They go on to point out that, on occasion, speakers of English do classify different types of snow (i.e. "good-packing snow" and "bad-packing snow") but do so with phrases instead of a single lexical item. They conclude that English speakers' and Inuit speakers' worldviews cannot differ in this way, given that both groups are able to discriminate between different types of snow.<ref name=":0" />

==== Structural differences ====
To refute Whorf's notion that structural categories correspond to symbolic categories, Lenneberg and Brown point out that structural categories rarely have consistent meanings. When they do, these meanings are not necessarily evident to speakers, as the case of grammatical gender in French illustrates. All French words with feminine gender do not reflect “feminine” qualities, nor do they share any common attributes. Lenneberg and Brown conclude that the existence of structural classes alone cannot be interpreted as reflective of differences in cognition.<ref name=":0" />

==== Conclusions ====
Lenneberg and Brown ultimately conclude that the causal relationship between linguistic differences and cognitive differences cannot be concluded based on the evidence Whorf provides, which is solely linguistic in nature. They do, however, appear to find the proposition worthy of study, and pursue the study of [[Linguistic relativity and the color naming debate|color terms]] in order to supplement linguistic evidence with psychological data.<ref name=":0" />