Boris Iomdin
Russian Language Institute,
Russian Academy of Sciences
iomdin@ruslang.ru
Lecture 3. Plan
 Language and mind
 Von Humboldt’s ideas
 Followers of von Humboldt
 Linguistic relativity: Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
 Universalist theory
 Recent trends
 Translatability issues
 Wierzbicka’s approach
 Naïve vs. scientific picture of the world
Language and mind
 Is the way we speak connected to the way we think?
 Many monographs:
 N. Chomsky, Language and Mind
 L. Vygotsky, Reasoning and Speech
 A. Luriya, Language and Conscience
 A. Potebnya, Thought and Language
 Many open questions:
 Are linguistic structures innate?
 How do children master a language?
 Is thinking without language possible at all?
What can semantics tell us?
 Linguistic conceptualization of the world:
how does the language segment and reflect it?
 Do speakers of different languages see the world in
different ways?
 Does the language show us the same picture of the
world as the scientific knowledge does?
W. von Humboldt (1767–1835)
 Diplomat, philosopher, founder of Humboldt University in
Berlin, architect of the Prussian education system
 He was the first to claim that the character and structure of
a language expresses the inner life and knowledge of its
speakers…
 and that languages must differ from one another in the
same way and to the same degree as those who use them.
W. von Humboldt, On the structural variety of human
language and its influence on the intellectual development of
mankind (an introduction to the grammar of the ancient
Kawi language of Java), 1836
Humboldt’s ideas
 The comparative study of the world's languages
represents a constant challenge to the empirical
linguist and to the philosopher.
 Linguistic studies are important to discover the part
language plays in the formation and transmission of
ideas not just in “the metaphysical sense” as
conditioning the creation of concepts, but also in the
way in which an individual language imparts its
formative imprint on these concepts.
 The diversity of languages is not a diversity of signs
and sounds but a diversity of views of the world.
Humboldt’s ideas
 “Every language draws about the people that possess it
a circle whence it is possible to exit only into the circle
of another one. To learn a foreign language should
therefore be to acquire a new standpoint in the worldview hitherto possessed, and in fact to a certain extent
is so, since every language contains the whole
conceptual fabric and mode of presentation of a
portion of mankind. But because we always carry over,
more or less, our own world view, this outcome is not
purely and completely experienced”.
Followers of Humboldt
 Neo-Humboldtians (J. Trier, L. Weisgerber): each
language represents a world view (Weltbild). It is
carried primarily in the lexicon, in related and
contrasting sets of words. To understand a language,
one must reconstruct its “semantic fields”.
 E. Cassirer: the “thought world” in which we live is
“linguistically determined”: it is in fact an “ideational
world”, or a “spiritual reality”
 North American School of cultural anthropology
(F. Boas): several words for snow in Inuktitut
“Eskimo words for snow”
 aaniuvak 'perpetual snow patch‘, aksakaaqtuq 'snowball‘, aluiqqaniq
'overhanging snow‘, alutsiniq 'deep snow hollow‘, aniu 'snow for drinking‘,
apijuq 'covered with snow‘, apigianngaut 'first snow‘, apilraun/apilraut 'first
layer of snow‘, apun/aput 'snow on the ground‘, apujjaqsuqtuq 'digs it out of the
snow‘, aputainnaruuvuq 'has much snow on clothes‘, apusialukpuq 'covered
with a lot of snow‘, apusimatiqtuq 'snow storming‘, apusimiriikkusijuq 'has
placed it on top of snow covered', apummiungujut 'tent on snow‘, aqilluqqaq
'soft under crust snow‘, atairranaqtuq 'squeaky snow‘, autturunniq 'snow
pressed melted frozen‘, aujaqsuittuq 'eternal snow‘,
auviq/savuujaqtuaq/qulluaqtuq 'snow block‘, igluvijaq 'snow house'
ijaruajuq 'snow in the eye‘, ijaruvak 'new soft snow (which has packed)‘, illaujait
'dark ice‘, illaujiniq 'candle‘, illiti 'vertical snow house wall‘, immiugaq 'ice water'
immiuqtuq 'ice melts‘, immiugainnaatuq 'snow water‘, ivrarniq 'moderately soft
snow‘, ivunrit 'piled ice‘, ivvuit 'rough ice‘, kakkikulivuq 'wind blows snow‘,
kanangnaq 'snow wind‘, kapuqqalukpuq 'look for snow house‘, kapuraq 'test the
snow‘, kalirraq 'sound of sled in snow‘ and
some 200 more…
Criticism of the snow example
 defining "Eskimo“
 word boundary issues
 Eskimo word synthesis
 But the important point remains: it’s not that Inuktitut
speakers can choose among several words for snow,
but that they do not categorize all of them as "snow":
to them, each word is supposedly a separate concept.
Linguistic relativity
 E. Sapir, L. Whorf: the varying cultural concepts and
categories in different languages affect the cognitive
classification of the world, so that speakers of different
languages think and behave differently.
 “No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be
considered as representing the same social reality. The
worlds in which different societies live are distinct
worlds, not merely the same world with different labels
attached”
E. Sapir, The status of linguistics as a science, 1929
Whorf’s examples
 Hopi language: different notion of time (tense is not
an obligatory grammatical category in Hopi)
 Nootka language: no nouns, only verbs
 SAE (Standard Average European): count and mass
nouns
 Language influences colour perception
Colour terms across languages
 11 basic colour terms in English
 12 in Russian or Italian (blu/sinij – azzurro/goluboj)
 2 words for red in Hungarian: piros – vörös
 In Japanese, ao (青) is blue and green. Traffic lights are
ao shingō, blue skies are aozora. Midori (綠), a
relatively new word, is the colour of grass, but still
considered a variation of blue.
Universalist theory
N. Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, 1965
 All languages share the same underlying structure
 Linguistic structures are largely innate
 Differences between specific languages are merely
surface phenomena which do not affect cognitive
processes that are universal to all human beings
Basic colours are universal?
 B. Berlin, P. Kay, Basic Color Terms: Their Universality
and Evolution, 1969
 P. Kay, Ch. K. McDaniel, The linguistic significance of
the meanings of basic color terms, 1978
Recent trends
 Criticism of the universalist theory
 Advances in cognitive theory. G. Lakoff: different
metaphors reveal different things of thinking
 Structure centered approach. John Lucy: use of
grammatical number and numeral classifiers in
Yucatec result in Mayan speakers classifying objects
according to material rather than to shape
 Domain centered approach: colour terms, orientation
in time and space, kinship terms, etc.
 Behaviour centered approach, e.g. Pirahã not counting.
Language, a collective memory
 “Human languages are not only a means of
communication, they are also collective memories.
Through a language, a child quickly gets access to
many of the concepts, attitudes and values through
which the community he/she is going to be socialized
into structures its social and natural environment”
(J. Allwood).
Translatability issues
 Russian: pal’cy (fingers / toes), delat’ (do / make),
vysokij (high / tall), cvetok (flower / blossom)
 English: wash is Russian myt’ or stirat’, live is German
leben / wohnen, French vivre / habiter
 Chinese has no lexemes for ‘brother’ and ‘sister’:
 哥 (ge) ‘elder brother’
 弟 (di) ‘younger brother’
 姐 (jie) ‘elder sister’
 妹 (mei) ‘younger sister’
Approach of Anna Wierzbicka
 Semantics, culture and cognition, 1992
 Understanding cultures through their key words, 1996
 Emotions across languages and cultures: diversity and
universals, 1999
 Cross-cultural pragmatics, 2003 (2nd edition)
 English: meaning and culture, 2006
Ideas of Wierzbicka
 Unlike Whorf, who focuses more on grammar,
Wierzbicka primarily works with the vocabulary,
particularly with heavily culture laden words such as
emotions, speech acts, cultural values.
 Each language is composed of (1) a limited number of
elementary concepts existing in all languages and of
(2) an unequally greater amount of complex concepts
that can be described as culture-specific combinations
of the basic set.
 (more on Wierzbicka’s elementary concepts in the
next lecture)
Language-specific concepts
 Russian: dusha ≈ ‘soul’, toska ≈ ‘yearning’, sud’ba ≈
‘fate’, dal’ ≈ ‘distance, vista’, avos’ ≈ ‘perhaps’, …
 German Bruderschaft ≈ ‘brotherhood’
 German Vaterland / Heimat vs. Russian rodina /
otechestvo vs. Polish ojczyzna
 Japanese amae ≈ ‘dependence upon another’s love’,
enryo ≈ ‘interpersonal restraint’, omoyari ≈ ‘benefactive
empathy’, …
Fruits and vegetables
 Scientific picture: biological definitions?
 No vegetables!
 Fruits in botany: the seed-bearing structure in
angiosperms formed from the ovary after flowering.
Examples: sunflower, maple, walnut, cotton, mustard…
 In accordance with a US Supreme Court ruling in 1893,
the difference between a fruit and a vegetable is as
follows: “Any plant or part thereof eaten during the
main dish is a vegetable. If it is eaten at any other part
of the meal, it is a fruit.”
Fruits or vegetables?
 Many true fruits, in a botanical sense, are treated as
vegetables in cooking and food preparation because
they are not sweet.
 Examples: squash, pumpkin, cucumbers, tomatoes,
peas, beans, corn, eggplant, sweet pepper, chili, …
Naïve vs. scientific: overlapping
Fruits in Europe: official view
 "Jam" is a mixture, brought to a suitable gelled
consistency, of sugars, the pulp and/or purée of one or
more kinds of fruit and water.
 Tomatoes, the edible parts of rhubarb stalks, carrots,
sweet potatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, melons and
water-melons are considered to be fruit.
Council Directive 2001/113/EC of 20 December 2001 relating
to fruit jams, jellies and marmalades and sweetened chestnut
purée intended for human consumption
Berries
 Drupe (stone fruit): peach, coconut, mango, olive, …
 Berry: guava, tomato, blueberry, …
 Pepo: watermelon, cucumber, squash, …
 Aggregate: strawberry, …
 Multiple: mulberry, pineapple, …
Botany Handbook for Florida, University of Florida, Institute
of Food and Agricultural Sciences, 1999
Differences among languages
 Fruits in Russian: apricot, pineapple, orange,
pomegranate, banana, pear, fig, kiwi, lemon, mango,
peach, plum, apple, … Berries in Russian: strawberry, wild
strawberry, bilberry, blueberry, cranberry, cowberry,
gooseberry, blackcurrant, redcurrant, …
 Grapes? Cherries? Avocado?
 In Brazil, the avocado is traditionally consumed with
sugar as a dessert or in milk shakes, and hence regarded
as a fruit
 Berry in Bulgarian and Czech?
Summary by Ju. Apresjan
 Each language reflects a specific way of perceiving and
organizing the world about us. The meanings expressed
in natural language form a unified system of views.
 The way of conceptualizing reality (the world-view)
inherent in a given language is partly universal and
partly national-specific, such that speakers of different
languages may view the world in slightly different ways,
through the prism of their languages.
 This view is naïve in the sense that it differs in many
important particulars from a scientific picture of the
world.
Next lecture
 Metalanguages of semantics. Lingua
mentalis. Lexicographic definitions.