Language and Thought
Lauren Schmidt
5/18/06
The Whorfian question
The Whorfian question
Whorf (1956):
“Are our own concepts of time, space, and
matter given in substantially the same form
by experience to all men, or are they in
part conditioned by the structure of
particular languages?”
Does language affect thought?
Does language affect thought?
Some people seem to think so:
?
Does language affect thought?
Some people seem to think so:
CHANGING LANGUAGE, “POLITICAL CORRECTNESS”:
chairman  chair or chairperson
Indian  Native American
handicapped  disabled or differently abled
POLITICAL SPEECH:
?
“mistakes were made” = “we were not responsible”
Does language affect thought?
Some people seem to think so:
WEBSITES WITH “COMMON SENSE” ADVICE:
“Deliberately speak positively. Remove negative
thinking from your life by changing your interpretation of
events. Rather than immediately focusing on what could
or did go wrong, stop and consider possible positive
outcomes.... This positive outlook forces you to think
successfully....” (Romanus Wolter, Entrepreneur.com)
Does language affect thought?
Some people seem to think so:
FICTION --- NEWSPEAK:
secret police  "Ministry of Love"
Ministry of War  "Ministry of Peace"
“free” (only used in statements like "This dog is free from lice.")
"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the
range of thought?… Has it ever occurred to your, Winston, that by
the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be
alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having
now?…The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there
will be no thought, as we understand it now.” (Orwell, 1984)
Does language affect thought?
Some people seem to think so:
THE MAN HIMSELF
(Whorf, 1956):
“We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native
language. The categories and types that we isolate from
the world of phenomena we do not find there because
they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the
world is presented in a kaleidoscope flux of impressions
which has to be organized by our minds—and this
means largely by the linguistic systems of our minds.”
Does language affect thought?
Some people seem to think not:
Does language affect thought?
Some people seem to think not:
Chomsky (1984):
“The claim that we’re making about primitive notions is
that if data were presented in such a way that these
primitives couldn’t be applied to it directly,
prelinguistically, before you have a grammar, then
language couldn’t be learnt… We have to assume that
there are some prelinguistic notions that can pick out
pieces of the world, say elements of this meaning and
this sound.”
Does language affect thought?
Some people seem to think not:
“There is no scientific evidence that languages dramatically affect
their speakers’ way of thinking.... The idea that language shapes
thinking seemed plausible when scientists were in the dark about
how thinking works or even how to study it. Now that cognitive
scientists know how to think about thinking, there is less of a
temptation to equate it with language....”
- Steven Pinker (1994)
“Does language have a dramatic effect on thought in some other
way than through communication? Probably not.”
- Bloom & Keil (2001)
“I hate [linguistic] relativism more than I hate anything else,
excepting, perhaps, fiberglass powerboats.”
- Jerry Fodor (1985)
Why are people so vehement?
• Languages vary quite a lot – do our minds vary
a lot, too? Intriguing and maybe scary
• Theories at stake
– Modularity
– Domain-specificity
• Can learning (the right) language help you think
better? Can failing to learn it hinder thought?
– Education – language as a tool
– Scary ethnocentrism – judging some languages
inferior
Does language affect thought?
...What does this question actually mean?
Let’s clarify the question further...
...how might language affect thought?
How might language affect thought?
• What aspects of cognition does it affect?
–
–
–
–
perception?
memory?
representation?
reasoning?
How might language affect thought?
• What aspects of cognition does it affect?
• What kinds of cognitive performance does it affect?
– performance on tasks involving language?
– performance on non-linguistic tasks?
How might language affect thought?
• What aspects of cognition does it affect?
• What kinds of cognitive performance does it affect?
• What aspects of language might affect thought?
–
–
–
–
phonology?
vocabulary?
morphosyntax?
metaphorical speech?
How might language affect thought?
• What aspects of cognition does it affect?
• What kinds of cognitive performance does it affect?
• What aspects of language might affect thought?
• By what process does language affect thought?
– causing us to organize our thoughts in certain ways in order to talk
about them?
– focusing our attention on certain aspects of or patterns in the world?
– causing us to habitually practice certain ways of thinking?
– influencing how we chunk things or describe things in memory?
– altering our low-level perception through top-down influence?
– suggesting new ideas or categories to us?
– giving us ways to understand and reason about abstract/hard to
perceive domains?
– affect our cognition in other unexpected ways?
How might language affect thought?
•
•
•
•
What aspects of cognition does it affect?
What kinds of cognitive performance does it affect?
What aspects of language might affect thought?
By what process does language affect thought?
... Let us pursue some answers!
Prologue: the state of the debate
pre-1991(ish)
The state of the debate in the early
1990s
Color perception had
been an area of
cross-linguistic
difference where
people initially
thought there was
evidence for Whorfian
effects...
The state of the debate in the early 1990s
Correlation between codability and memory
Brown & Lennenberg (1954): codability of
English color terms for a particular color is
correlated with their recognition memory
0.6
*
0.5
*
*
0.4
0.3
7 s ecs
30 secs
delay between learning & test
180 sec s
The state of the debate in the early 1990s
So maybe language affects color perception
and/or memory, even on tasks where no
language is involved?
The state of the debate in the early
1990s
But other evidence
made this seem an
incorrect analysis...
Perhaps the causal
path went the other
way?
Universal evolution of color terms
•
•
Focal colors (“best examples”) consistent
across different speakers
Speakers of all languages picked out the
same kinds of groups of colors, based on
the natural world
– Light vs. dark
– 4 primary color foci: red, green, yellow, blue
Berlin & Kay (1969)
Universal evolution of color terms
Berlin & Kay (1969)
Some color concepts never appear
X
X
BLELLOW
Universal color cognition?
Similarity ratings across colors didn’t
seem to vary for speakers of different
languages.
Color perception seemed determined by
biology, not language.
Heider [Rosch] (1972)
The state of the debate in the early
1990s
Whorf and his ideas fell into disrepute and
ridicule.
The state of the debate in the early
1990s
But... Was color perception the most reasonable
domain to look for an effect?
The state of the debate in the early
1990s
“thinking for speaking”:
“The activity of thinking takes on a particular
quality when it is employed in the activity of
speaking.... A particular utterance is never a
direct reflection of “objective” or perceived reality
or of an inevitable and universal mental
representation of a situation.... “Thinking for
speaking” involves picking those characteristics
that (a) fit some conceptualization of the event,
and (b) are readily encodable in the language.”
Slobin (1987)
The state of the debate in the early
1990s
“thinking for speaking”:
“the dog ran into the house.” (manner encoded in
verb; common in English)
“the dog entered the house by running.” (manner
encoded in optional adjunct; French
construction)
Slobin (1996)
The state of the debate in the early
1990s
“thinking for speaking”:
• Speakers of different languages tend to use
many more manner words in their description of
an identical scene if their language encodes it in
the verb (like English) than in an optional adjunct
(like French)
• English speakers can list far more manner verbs
in a short time than French speakers (better
lexical access)
• Speakers of manner-obligatory languages more
readily attend to fine-grained manner distinctions
Slobin (2003)
The state of the debate in the early
1990s
Maybe the case against Whorf was not so solid
on all fronts?
At the same time, interesting work was going on
in elsewhere...
The state of the debate in the early
1990s
E.g., Choi and Bowerman (1991)
Spatial preposition systems vary widely in how
languages divide up the continuous space
Apparent correspondence between preposition
systems and spatial reasoning (e.g., similarity
and categorization)
The state of the debate in the early
1990s
E.g., Choi and Bowerman (1991)
Maybe language can help create specific
categories in domains that we all perceive and
think about, but which don’t have any obvious
universal and intrinsic boundaries dividing them?
The state of the debate in the early
1990s
And elsewhere, people were examining what
happens when one language completely lacks a
way of talking about things that other languages
have...
Part I: Benjamin Lee Whorf and the
Case of the Spatial Reference Terms
Frames of Reference
(how one talks about the directions and locations of objects in space…)
Figure
Reference Object
• “Where is the girl?”
– Need a Ground/Reference Object
– And a relation between Figure and Ground/Reference
Object
(e.g., a coordinate system = Frame of Reference).
Frames of Reference
(how one talks about the directions and locations of objects in space…)
Figure
Reference Object
• “Where is the girl?”
– The girl is to the south of the umbrella.
(GEOCENTRIC FRAME OF REFERENCE)
– The girl is to the left of the umbrella.
(EGOCENTRIC FRAME OF REFERENCE)
– The girl is at the umbrella’s front/downward side.
(INTRINSIC FRAME OF REFERENCE)
Crosslinguistic Variations
(Brown & Levinson, 1993; Pederson et al., 1998; Majid et al., 2004, etc.)
• English
– Egocentric preference
• “left” and “right”
• Tzeltal Mayan (spoken in Tenejapa, Mexico)
– Geocentric preference
• alan “downhill” (N), aj’kol “uphill” (S), jejch “crosshill” (EW)
– Lexical Gap: No projective left or right!
uphill
downhill
crosshill
How do Tzeltal speakers tend to
talk about space?
Frequently make statements that are the
spatial equivalent of, “hand me the spoon
that is to the northeast of the cup.”
(sounds a bit odd in English, doesn’t it?
... could you even follow that instruction?)
Claims about aspects of thought affected by
linguistic frames of reference
• Gestural depiction of events during storytelling (e.g., Haviland, 1993)
• Memory for real-life events (Levinson,
1997)
• Dead-reckoning and navigational abilities
(Levinson, 1996)
Tenejapans show an interesting tendency to
confuse left-right inversions or mirror-images
(i.e., reflections across the apparent vertical axis),
even when visually presented simultaneously,
which seems related to their absence of ‘left’ and
‘right’ terms, and the absence of related
asymmetries in their material culture.
(Levinson, 1996 in Gumperz & Levinson: 182)
Tenejapans maintain a constant sense of absolute
orientation, presumably by running a continuous
background computation of egocentric heading with
respect to abstract bearings, integrating multiple
internal and external cues to achieve this.
Levinson, Kita, Haun, & Rasch (2002) p. 173
I am here
Li and Gleitman: this can’t be!
• Rats and pre-linguistic children both show signs
of using both egocentric and geocentric
reasoning, so it can’t be a matter of language
teaching these reasoning skills
• English speaking adults use geocentric terms all
the time (e.g., uptown/downtown), so if language
does have an effect, it should have an effect on
them, too!
• (But anyway, concepts are innate and language
is modular, so language can’t have an effect.)
Experimental Paradigm – ANIMALS-IN-A-ROW Task
(Bird’s Eye View)
Rotation Experiment
Step 1: Ss memorize items
(right side,
north side)
Step 2: Ss rotated
Subject
Table 1
Table 2
Table 1
Table 2
Step 3: Ss recreate “same” as Table 1. At least 2 possible solutions.
Table 1
Table 2
Step 3 egocentric tendency
(right side)
(right side)
(north side)
(north side)
Step 3 geocentric tendency
Table 1
Table 2
Brown & Levinson (1993)
100
Dutch N = 38
Tenejapans N = 27
% of Subjects
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
0
1
2
3
4
5
Number of Geocentric Trials
* Also reported in Pederson, Danziger, Wilkes, Levinson, Kita, Senft (1998).
(Alleged) confounding factors
Testing Location
Tenejapans tested outdoors on their hill and Dutchmen tested indoors in
laboratory.
S (Uphill)
House
1
(Tenejapan table setup
Outdoor, porch next to house)
2
N (Downhill)
Shouldn’t spatial performance be influenced by
spatial environment?
Egocentric vs. Allocentric Debate
Acredelo Setup
One-shot, No Training
Acredolo (1979)
Step 1: Hide object in one of
two locations.
Step 2: Move infant 180° to
other side of the table
Step 3: Where does infant
search?
Infant &
Mother
Vary Setting Unfamiliar vs. Familiar
• bare laboratory
• laboratory with clutter
• home
Result on Familiarity of
Environment
Home
FAMILIAR
Bare
Laboratory
UNFAMILIAR
Egocentric
Cluttered
Egocentric
Allocentric
Bottom-line: Environment affects spatial behavior.
Turning Americans into Tenejapans
Small Animal Setup
Tenejapans
S (Uphill)
House
1
2
N (Downhill)
Library
Walnut St
1
2
S
Window
N
(room)
Condition 1: IRCS Room BLINDS DOWN
Placing Americans in a setting like the Dutch.
Condition 2: IRCS Room BLINDS UP
Placing Americans in a setting like the Tenejapans.
(testing location: IRCS -- indoor)
Small Animal Data
Brown & Levinson (1993)
100
Dutch N = 38
Tenejapans N = 27
90
% of Subjects
% of Subjects
90
English Speakers
Blinds-Down and Blinds-Up
100
80
70
60
50
40
80
70
60
50
40
30
30
20
20
10
10
0
0
1 2 3 4 5
Number of Geocentric Trials
IRCS Blind Down N =10
IRCS Blind Up N =10
0
0 1 2 3 4 5
Number of Geocentric Trials
Increasing Saliency of Landmarks
Ducks Setup
Unmentioned Duck Ponds on the sides of tables as landmark.
Condition 1: Absolute Biasing
Library
Walnut St
1
S
Window
2
(room)
(testing location: IRCS -- indoor)
N
Condition 2: Relative Biasing
Library
Walnut St
1
2
(room)
S
Window
N
Ducks Data
Ducks on the Tables
Landmark Manipulation
Brown & Levinson (1993)
100
Dutch N = 38
Tenejapans N = 27
90
% of Subjects
% of Subjects
90
100
80
70
60
50
40
80
70
60
50
40
30
30
20
20
10
10
0
0
0
1 2 3 4 5
Number of Geocentric Trials
Relative Bias N=20
Absolute Bias N=20
0
1 2 3 4 5
Number of Geocentric Trials
Swivel Chair Task
We called the bluff of our principal informant, who
claimed to know day and night, awake or asleep,
mountain or plain, where batz'il alan 'true downhill'
always lay (a direction he indicated with precision
recurrently). We blindfolded him, and spun him
around over 20 times in a darkened house. Still
blindfolded and dizzy, he pointed in the agreed
direction!
Brown & Levinson (1993), p. 52
Swivel Chair Task
Egocentric
Geocentric
1. Participant (P) sits in chair.
2. Experimenter (E) hides a coin in 1 of 2 boxes.
3. E blind-folds P.
4. E spins P.
5. E takes blind-fold off P.
6. P has to point to the box with the coin.
% Correct
Swivel Chair Results
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
egocentric
geocentric
Paired t(23)=2.82, p = .01. Egocentric 92.3% > Geocentric 80.0%
But!
Not so fast, say Levinson et al (2002)!
Boy, did you guys ever get it wrong, they
say.
Levinson: why L&G were wrong
First, they forgot about an entire frame of
reference (intrinsic) – conflated with
geocentric in various cases
Levinson: why L&G were wrong
First, they forgot about an entire frame of
reference (intrinsic) – conflated with
geocentric in various cases
– kids and rats evidence mostly confounds
absolute and intrinsic reasoning
– “uptown” and “downtown” are intrinsic terms
(equivalent to “towards the front of
Manhattan”); English does not really use
cardinal directions very frequently in local
reference frames
Levinson: why L&G were wrong
Second, testing of Tzeltals and other tribes
did not occur outside in most of the spatial
reasoning studies
– often inside with no windows
Levinson: why L&G were wrong
Additionally, they missed the point of the
Animals-in-a-Row task...
The point was to see what frame of
reference people use automatically when
direction is incidental to the task
Levinson: why L&G were wrong
Additionally, they missed the point of the
Animals-in-a-Row task...
Translate
up to 20m
Table 2
Subject
Table 1
Step 1: “Memorize
identity and order
carefully!”
Table 1
Step 2: “Make it
the same.”
Step 3: “Make it
the same.”
Levinson: why L&G were wrong
Additionally, they missed the point of the
Animals-in-a-Row task...
The original task was harder and
emphasized memory. In Li & Gleitman’s
version, it was transparently about
direction (a lot of subjects asked which
frame of reference to use).
Levinson: why L&G were wrong
Levinson et al. also tried and failed to
replicate Li & Gleitman’s indoor/outdoor
results with Dutch speakers.
Levinson: why L&G were wrong
What’s more, Li and Gleitman’s duck task
confounded geocentric and intrinsic reference
frames.
Also, the duck pond is not a normal landmark;
normal landmarks don’t exist in multiple places.
It was more a part of the scene that they had to
replicate rather than an absolute landmark.
Maybe the English speakers weren’t really using
absolute directions in their reasoning...
Levinson: why L&G were wrong
Levinson et al.’s modified Duck Pond task
Intrinsic condition
Egocentric condition
Subject
Table 1
Levinson: why L&G were wrong
Levinson et al.’s modified Duck Pond task
– Showed that English speakers could be using
intrinsic reasoning at the original task (they don’t
have to be skilled at absolute reasoning)
– Sure, you can bias people to use different kinds of
reasoning that they are used to using. So?
Levinson: why L&G were wrong
Levinson et al. (2002):
• People who have egocentric, absolute, and intrinsic
language terms (e.g., English speakers) can use all
kinds of spatial reasoning to some extent
• People without some kinds of spatial reference terms in
their language may have limited spatial reasoning
abilities in some domains, and may be more practiced
at others
• The Li and Gleitman work is consistent with these
orignal claims
The debate rages on
• Li & Gleitman, Levinson, and others,
continue to run similar tasks
• Recent Spelke lab results show that
learning “left” and “right” correlates with a
tremendous improvement in relative
spatial reasoning for English speaking kids
The debate rages on
• Tentative results in favor of:
– Language as a tool for reasoning
– Language as something that forces you to
attend to certain aspects of the world and
practice using them
Part II: Benjamin Lee Whorf and the
Case of the Color Words
So, how does language shape
color memory?
• By helping us encode and remember colors?
• Or actually changing the structure of the color
space?
Roberson & Davidoff, 2000
BLUE
GREEN
Roberson & Davidoff method
Roberson & Davidoff method
5 second delay
Roberson & Davidoff method
no interference
verbal interference
BEECH
TOSS
RITE
PEGS
SINKS
MICE
CROWNED
LAIN
NIP
SCRIPT
LAPSE
FOIL
WAXED
KALE
LASH
LAPSE
KALE
TOSS
CRACKED
FOIL
HEN
TACT
LASH
RITE
DANCED
BEECH
HEN
DANCED
LASH
NIP
TOSS
PEGS
Roberson & Davidoff data
across boundary
within category
percent correct recognition
100
90
80
70
60
50
no interference
verbal interference
Maybe the task demands are what
is making performance poorer in
the interference case?
Boroditsky and Frank
The Stimuli
BLUE
GREEN
(taken from Roberson & Davidoff, 2000)
The task
Response time – implicit measure
BETWEEN
CATEGORY
WITHIN
BLUE
WITHIN
GREEN
no interference
verbal interference
27348716
27348716
27348746
crosses category boundary
within color category
between
within
1500
RT (ms)
1400
1300
1200
1100
1000
n = 15
crosses category boundary
within color category
between
within
1500
RT (ms)
1400
1300
1200
1100
1000
none
verbal
Interference Type
n = 15
crosses category boundary
within color category
between
within
1500
Category Advantage (ms)
RT (ms)
1400
300
1300
1200
1100
1000
none
verbal
Interference Type
n = 15
p < .05
250
200
150
100
50
0
none
verbal
Interference type
n = 15
• Interference effect:
– language per se, or just effect of secondary
task?
• Interference effect:
– language per se, or just effect of secondary
task?
– add spatial interference task (balanced for difficulty)
no interference
verbal interference
27348716
27348716
27348746
spatial interference
crosses category boundary
within color category
between
within
1500
Category Advantage (ms)
RT (ms)
1400
300
1300
1200
1100
1000
none
verbal
Interference Type
n = 15
spatial
p < .05
p <.05
250
200
150
100
50
0
none
verbal
Interference type
n = 15
spatial
• Verbal interference per se seems to
reduce categorical perception, but
– is it really perception?
– eye movements?
– shifts of attention?
– memory?
– Solution: Simplify the task.
Which side is the edge on?
WITHIN
CATEGORY
BETWEEN
CATEGORY
crosses category boundary
within color category
between
within
RT (ms)
900
800
700
y
600
500
none
verbal
Interference Type
n = 12
spatial
300
Categorical Advanatge (ms)
1000
250
200
p =.35
p =.23
150
100
50
0
none
verbal
Interference Type
n = 12
spatial
Language and color
• Language can work online as part of the
decision-making process, influencing our
judgments about color even when all stimuli are
presented simultaneously
• It doesn’t influence simple discrimination of
boundaries
• .
Language and color
• Within a language
– Can language really influence color perception?
– What are the limits?
• Across languages
– Does color perception really differ across languages?
– What are the limits?
COLOR
blue
goluboy
siniy
Boroditsky and Frank; Witthoft et al.
COLOR
blue
goluboy
light blue
siniy
dark blue
Back to the triad task...
Russian
100
0
-100
-200
none
verbal
spatial
Interference type
n = 23 , 22 (Russi ans, Engl ish)
English
300
200
Category Advantage (ms)
200
English
300
Mean Category Advantage (ms)
Mean Category Advantage (ms)
300
100
0
-100
-200
none
verbal
spatial
Interference type
n = 23 , 22 (Russi ans, Engl ish)
250
200
150
100
50
0
none
verbal
Interference type
n = 15
spatial
within between
goluboy category
1500
1400
1300
1200
1100
Distance from individual border
No Interference
Spatial Intereference
Verbal Interference
within
siniy
Conclusions so far
• Language is involved online in some simple
perceptual judgments
– Seems to involve online language-related processing,
which can be interfered with
• There are cross-linguistic differences in
perceptual discrimination
• Language is not involved in all perceptual tasks
– language may only play a role in more difficult tasks
Does it matter that language processing
occurs primarily on the left side of the
brain?
Within category trials: All of the distractors have the same
color name as the target
Between category trials: All the distractors have a different
color name than the target
Within category trials: All of the distractors have the same
color name as the target
Between category trials: All the distractors have a different
color name than the target
Verbal interference condition (rehearsing digits silently)
• Replication of earlier results in RVF:
Between categories is easier than within
• Language seems to aid performance
(between-category) in RVFrelative to LVF
• Verbal interference reverses effect
in RVF
• No effect in LVF
What about other forms of interference?
Further color conclusions
• The language effect appears to be
primarily in the part of the brain where
language processing occurs
• Could be preprocessing (effects of
language on perception over time) and/or
postperceptual (language makes an online
difference in how you process color)
– Verbal interference indicates that it’s at least
partly postperceptual
Part III: Benjamin Lee Whorf and the
Case of the Past Tense
An interesting quirk of grammar
English:
Indonesian
(simulated):
He will kick/is about
to kick the ball.
He is kicking the ball.
He kicked the ball.
He kick the ball [soon].
He kick the ball [now].
He kick the ball [already].
Which is more similar?
Cross-linguistic similarity judgments
Boroditsky, Ham, Ramscar (2003)
What if you get bilingual speakers primed to
“think” in one language or the other?
Give instructions in either English or
Indonesian
Bilingual judgments of similarity
What’s going on here?
• Explicit linguistic effect? People describe
scenes to themselves, rate similarity
based on descriptions
• People habitually attend more to the things
that are encoded obligatorily in their
language?
Looking for memory effects
If speakers are habitually attending more
to the aspects of the world that their
language encodes, this should affect
memory
Looking for memory effects
1. Show people lots of
different events in
some stage of
progress
•
woman opening
umbrella, man who
is about to kick ball,
woman who just
poured water...
2. Test recognition
Which one did you see?
Cross-linguistic memory effects
Bilingual memory effects
Past tense conclusions
• Quirks of grammar can affect similarity
judgments
• Aspects of experience that your language
obligatorily encodes are remembered
better
• People possibly prepare to attend more to
certain aspects of the world based on the
language they are currently using
Part IV: Benjamin Lee Whorf and the
Case of Grammatical Gender
English:
“This is an apple. It is tasty.”
German:
“This is an apple. He is tasty.”
Spanish:
“This is an apple. She is tasty.”
English:
“This is an apple. It is tasty.”
German:
“This is an apple. He is tasty.”
Spanish:
“This is an apple. She is tasty.”
Eh? What’s that all about, then?
That’s not even a meaningful quirk of grammar!
(right?)
English:
“This is an apple. It is tasty.”
German:
“This is an apple. He is tasty.”
Spanish:
“This is an apple. She is tasty.”
Eh? What’s that all about, then?
(... and thus did Lauren find her way into
cognitive science.)
Memory task
• Used 24 object names (e.g., “apple”) that
had opposite grammatical genders in
Spanish and German (half masculine, half
feminine)
• Spanish and German speakers were
asked to perform in a memory task in
English to avoid making them think
explicitly about grammatical gender
German: der Apfel (m)
Spanish: la manzana (f)
apple -- Patrick
key -- Erica
cat -- George
Was the apple named Patrick?
Language and gender
Anecdotal evidence:
“You obviously can’t name a toaster George. That’s just
ludicrous. Toasters are obviously feminine!”
…it seems that grammatical gender is
affecting people’s representations of
objects
Language and gender
But how does grammatical gender affect
representations?
Are people attending more to certain
features of objects based on grammatical
gender?
Adjective task
• Used 24 object names (e.g., “apple”) that
had opposite grammatical genders in
Spanish and German (half masculine, half
feminine)
• Spanish and German speakers were
asked to perform an adjective-listing task
in English
apple
1. ___________________
2. ___________________
3. ___________________
Does this affect anything less explicitly
linguistic than descriptions?
We see the same effect even with verbal suppression!
Objections?
Objections?
• Maybe it’s just an effect of culture on
language and thought
Objections?
• Maybe it’s just an effect of culture on
language and thought
Let’s teach English speakers two different,
opposite grammatical gender systems and
see what they do!
Language and gender: summary
• A quirk of grammar can change people’s
representations in very real ways
– Cause them to attend to different aspects of
objects and represent those aspects more
– Affect their similarity judgments
– Affect their performance on memory tasks
• The category is perceived to be in some
sense non-arbitrary
Part V: Benjamin Lee Whorf and the
Case of the Metaphor of Time
How do people talk about time?
ENGLISH:
“The meeting has been moved forward.”
“It’s all behind me now.”
Time
How do people talk about time?
MANDARIN:
Time
Boroditsky (2001)
How do people think about time?
Are we thinking in terms of space, or is that just a way
of speaking about it?
How do people think about time?
?
Change spatial thinking  change temporal thinking
Cross-linguistic spatial priming task
Boroditsky (2001)
Cross-linguistic spatial priming task
Boroditsky (2001)
Cross-linguistic spatial priming task
Boroditsky (2001)
Bilingual performance
Boroditsky (2001)
Other spatial priming effects
We talk about ourselves as moving
through time:
“We’re coming up on Christmas!”
“We passed the deadline last week.”
We also talk about time as moving past
us:
“Christmas is coming up!”
“The deadline passed last week.”
Other spatial priming effects
Visual or spatial priming of one system or
the other can change the way people
answer this ambiguous question:
“The meeting originally scheduled for next Wednesday has been
moved forward two days.”
When is the meeting scheduled for now?
Boroditsky (2000)
Another space/time effect
If spatial reasoning can prime temporal
reasoning, can it also interfere with it?
Another space/time effect
We talk about time as having a certain
length, which is also our word for spatial
extent.
spatial/temporal estimation task:
– Will space interfere with time?
– Will time interfere with space?
Casasanto & Boroditsky
Casasanto & Boroditsky
Casasanto & Boroditsky
200-800 pixels x 1-5 seconds
Casasanto & Boroditsky
Overall, people were pretty good
Casasanto & Boroditsky
Interference effects
Casasanto & Boroditsky
Another space/time effect
• Spatial priming/interference affects
temporal task performance, but not vice
versa
• Further cross-linguistic work by Boroditsky
& Casasanto shows that the effect varies
depending on the extent to which your
language uses a particular spatial
metaphor
Part VI: Benjamin Lee Whorf and the
Case of Numbers
Number
Where does our numerical
competency come from?
Does language affect our
understanding of number?
Does what language you
speak affect how well you
can manipulate numbers?
Number
• Two types of non-
linguistic number systems
• Subitization
• Analog magnitude
• Language effects on
numerical competency
Subitization
A Schematic Diagram…
Near-perfect on 1 thru 3
Subitization etc
Applies to ADDITION as well
Wynn (1992)
Subitization etc
Also to OBJECT TRACKING
Essentially, we seem to represent
exact quantities only for very small
numbers (1 through 3 or 4)
Analog Magnitude System
We can estimate approximate
quantities for numbers larger than 3
Analog Magnitude System
Habituation
Test
Analog Magnitude System
6-mo Infants Can Discriminate 8 vs 16 dots
Xu & Spelke (2000)
Analog Magnitude System
6-mo Infants CAN’T Discriminate 8 vs 12 dots
Xu & Spelke (2000)
Analog Magnitude System
• Present in many nonhuman animals,
including pigeons and monkeys, as well as
adults and infants
• Represents large approximate number
• Follows Weber’s Law
∆I
I
= k
Xu & Spelke (2000)
Non-linguistic
Subitization
Analog magnitude
Linguistic
Non-linguistic
Subitization
Linguistic
Learning to count
* learning the concept of exact
number larger than 1 to 3
Analog magnitude
Many languages have counting systems…
(though there are languages without)
Usually they have intermediate number systems, however
The Pirahã
•Semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers
• Live in lowland Amazonia
• Population 160-200
• Villages of 10-20 people
• Monolingual in Pirahã
• Resist assimilation to Brazilian
culture
• Limited trading (no money)
• No external representations
(writing, art, toys…)
Gordon (2004)
The Pirahã
QUANTIFIERS
hói (falling tone)
one(ish)
hoí (rising tone)
two(ish)
baagi
many
Gordon (2004)
The Pirahã
Can the Piraha represent exact
numerosities despite the lack of
labels or intermediate counting
systems?
Gordon (2004)
Given:
Correct:
Gordon (2004)
Given:
Correct:
Gordon (2004)
Given:
Correct:
Gordon (2004)
Given:
Correct:
Gordon (2004)
Given:
Correct:
Gordon (2004)
Given:
Correct:
Gordon (2004)
Apparently, the Pirahã may not be
able to represent exact numerosity
Gordon (2004)
Part I: Benjamin Lee Whorf and the
Case of the Vowels of Attraction
Can the sounds of language affect thought?
• Saussure’s arbitrariness of the sign
– Different sounds assigned to the same meaning crosslinguistically
– Dissociation of sound and thought
Can the sounds of language affect thought?
Some suggestions to the contrary:
swirl
whirl
twirl
unfurl
Can the sounds of language affect thought?
Some suggestions to the contrary:
“Sapir (1929) first suggested that cross-linguistically, front and back
vowels are robustly associated with specific connotations: front
vowels like [i] and [ı] are perceived as "smaller" than back vowels like
[u]. Other researchers have further explored this idea, documenting
that the same association occurs in many languages and cultures
(e.g. Ultan 1978; Jakobson 1937). A non-arbitrary sound-meaning
relation has also been suggested of some consonants: for instance,
Kelly, Leben, and Cohen (2003) suggest that obstruents like [g], [b],
and [k] are perceived to be 'hard' and masculine, while sonorants like
[l], [n], and [r] are 'soft' and feminine” (Perfors, 2004)
Can the sounds of language affect thought?
Sounds that are big and small? Masculine and feminine?
... Could different names for people affect the way we
perceive them?
Hot or Not? Predictions
vs.
“Tanya”
“Eve”
Hot or Not? Results
Can the sounds of language affect thought?
Yes, to a small extent, the sound of a name can affect the
perception of its referent.
Going back to where we started...
Does language affect thought?
It depends on what you mean by the
question.
• Does language determine thought?
No.
It depends on what you mean by the
question.
• Does language determine thought?
No.
• Does language influence thought in every way that has
ever been proposed?
No. (Large literature of null results!)
It depends on what you mean by the
question.
• Does language determine thought?
No.
• Does language influence thought in every way that has
ever been proposed?
No. (Large literature of null results!)
• Does language shape thought in a wide variety of
manners and domains?
It sure looks like it!
How might language affect thought?
•
•
•
•
What aspects of cognition does it affect?
What kinds of cognitive performance does it affect?
What aspects of language might affect thought?
By what process does language affect thought?
How might language affect thought?
• What aspects of cognition does it affect?
– perception? color discrimination, attractiveness
– memory? past tense, spatial information, names for inanimate
objects
– representation? object representation (g.g.), abstract domain
(time)
– reasoning? Spatial reasoning, number reasoning, theory of mind
How might language affect thought?
• What aspects of cognition does it affect?
• What kinds of cognitive performance does it affect?
– performance on tasks involving language?
– performance on non-linguistic tasks?
How might language affect thought?
• What aspects of cognition does it affect?
• What kinds of cognitive performance does it affect?
• What aspects of language might affect thought?
–
–
–
–
phonology? HotOrNot
vocabulary? Spatial reference, number, color
morphosyntax? Grammatical gender, past tense, prepositions
metaphorical speech? Time
How might language affect thought?
• What aspects of cognition does it affect?
• What kinds of cognitive performance does it affect?
• What aspects of language might affect thought?
• By what process does language affect thought?
– causing us to organize our thoughts in certain ways in order to talk
about them?
– focusing our attention on certain aspects of or patterns in the world?
– causing us to habitually practice certain ways of thinking?
– influencing how we chunk things or describe things in memory?
– altering our low-level perception through top-down influence?
– suggesting new ideas or categories to us?
– giving us ways to understand and reason about abstract/hard to
perceive domains?
– affect our cognition in other unexpected ways?
The debate rages on...
thanks for all the slides
•
•
•
•
•
Peggy Li
Jesse Snedeker
Lera Boroditsky
Mike Frank
Amy Perfors