Re: Re: New Pelorian and Language Engineering

From: Benedict Adamson <yahoo_at_...>
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 00:20:03 +0100


morganconrad wrote:

...

> are there any
> scientific studies showing that native English speakers have
> different concepts of other people than say, the French, where "vous"
> and "tu" exist?

...

The idea that 'language determines though' is called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. It exists in mild and string forms. The mild form (that language INFLUENCES thought) is unremarkable. The strong form (that the kind of language we speak determines the ways we can think), however, is a priori unlikely (how do neologisms form?) and has been shown to be false through studies of basic colour terms (even in a language with only 2 basic colour words, speakers can think about different colours), bilinguals (who seem to have a conceptual system independent of both languages; the study was done on English-French bilinguals, so the answer to your immediate question is 'no') and bizarre inflected languages (IIRC, a Navajo language has inflections based on shapes, yet its speakers seem no more aware of geometric shapes than others).

HOWEVER, I maintain that if someone in the RW has had some theory about anthropology or history, however discredited it is now, then there should exist in Glorantha some people who confirm to that theory. Thus, we have noble savages (that's YOU, Heortlings) and structuralist mythology (the God Learners). By extension, there should exist in Glorantha a language that (perhaps mytho-magically) confirms to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. I think there could be no better candidate than New Pelorian.

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