Editing Linguistic determinism (section)

=== 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" />