Language & Thought
Masoud Jasbi
LIN001
Week 10
Language & Thought
To understand the relation between language and thought we need to first understand and define each.
We have done that for language in this course.
But how about thought?
Thought
Language
What is Thought?
Examples: think about
a cat
a cat chasing a dog
Your first day of school ever
Number 78
Your path going back home from here
The type of food you’d like to have for dinner
The answer to 78 + 87
A great white shark with horse legs running in a grass field
We call all of these thoughts but they are not really the same.
Thought vs. Cognition
Thought is not a technical term.
It is used loosely to refer to all or some mental processes.
The more technical term is cognition.
In cognitive science, cognition has clearer definitions and types:
Visual Cognition
Spatial Cognition
Auditory Cognition
Number Cognition
…
Relation Between Language & Thought
We are going to talk about three types of relation between them:
Thought
Language
Language = Thought Hypothesis
This hypothesis has two important assumptions or parts:
You may have heard this language=thought idea as:
We think in language.
We cannot think what we cannot say (and vice versa).
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
Do you think this is true?
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Language ≠ Thought: Spatial Reasoning
There are many mental processes that do not involve language.
Example: What would this 3D shape look like from above?
This is a spatial reasoning task.
To solve the task you rely on mental spatial simulation rather than language.
Language ≠ Thought: Navigation
Consider this navigation task:
What’s the shortest path out of the maze?
You probably imagined that path shown in red.
NOT: Down-left-down-notright-down-right-down-left-down
Or: right-go-left-go-...
It is not even clear what would be a good linguistic description of this path!
Language ≠ Thought: Number Cognition
Consider this number task: which side has more circles?
Did you use language to figure this out?
How many dots on the left? How many on the right? Total?
You just knew (somehow) that one side has more dots.
You you didn’t count each side then compare (which would be more linguistic).
Language ≠ Thought: Animal Cognition
Animals and prelinguistic babies can also accomplish:
Basic spatial reasoning,
Navigation,
Approximate number comparison,
…
Even though they have no language.
Global Aphasia
Individuals with global aphasia are able to add and subtract, solve logic problems, think about another person’s thoughts, appreciate music, and successfully navigate their environments.
The deficit seems to be restricted to linguistic thought and processing.
Rosemary Varley (UCL)
Neuroimaging Studies
Method
fMRI
Linguistic stimuli vs. pseudo-linguistic stimuli vs. other cognitive tasks
Compare activation levels in different regions of the brain
Fedorenko, Behr, Kenwisher (2011, PNAS)
Relation Between Language & Thought
We are going to talk about three types of relation between them:
Thought
Language
Linguistic Determinism
Another possible hypothesis is that language and thought are not the same and do not mirror each other but language determines and severely limits thought.
Example claims:
Some language doesn’t have a word for turquoise so the speakers can’t perceive the color.
Some language doesn’t have tense so the speakers perceive time differently.
Language with no gender marking don’t have gender discrimination.
Determinism and Perception
Consider this video: what are the name of these objects in the video?
For those of you who didn’t know the names of the instruments:
Did you not perceive the music?
Do you think you didn’t perceive it the way you will after learning the names?
Theoretical Issues with Determinism
Linguistic determinism runs into issues even in theory.
Suppose:
I speak language A with no word for concept X so I cannot understand X.
I start learning language B with a word for X.
Does that mean I can’t learn what the meaning of X is?!
This prediction is contrary to our observations on typical language learning experience and translation.
Relation Between Language & Thought
We are going to talk about three types of relation between them:
Thought
Language
Note: Language as a Mental Process
Language is itself a mental process and part of human cognition.
So language itself is a type of thought!
When we ask what is the relation between language and thought, we are really asking:
What is the relation between one type of thought (language) and other types of thought (non-linguistic thought)?
It should not be surprising that language affects thought “in some way”. After all we use it to convey thoughts!
Types of Thought (Cognition)
We can now go to subtypes of cognition to better understand how language may affect them or they can affect language:
Number Cognition
Research has discovered to systems of number cognition:
Trial 1
Which side has more circles?
Trial 2
How many circles are there?
Approximate Number Representation
The approximate number system is a hypothesized mental system that helps us know the approximate number of objects.
It is shared between humans and many other animals.
Exact Number Representation
The exact number representation relies on a count list and a recursive procedure for defining a successor.
Peano Axioms for Natural Numbers (informal):
1 is the primitive natural number and successor to no other number.
Every natural number a has a successor, denoted by S(a).
Distinct natural numbers have distinct successors: if a ≠ b, then S(a) ≠ S(b).
1 < 2 < 3 < 4 < 5 < 6 < 7 <
￮ < ￮￮ < ￮￮￮ < ￮￮￮￮ < ￮￮￮￮￮ < ￮￮￮￮￮￮ < ￮￮￮￮￮￮￮ <
This system relies on language (i.e. a symbolic system).
Number Words in Pirahã
Humans can understand numbers without knowing number words.
The Pirahã don’t have words for exact quantities.
Evidence: Experiment 1 (Numeral Elicitation, Fig 1)
The Pirahã understand exact quantities.
They perform well on a matching tasks not involving memory.
Evidence: Experiment 2 one-to-one-match, uneven-match
Number words help remembering quantities.
The Pirahã can perform well on a matching tasks not involving memory.
Evidence: Experiment 2 one-to-one-match, uneven-match
They cannot perform well on matching tasks involving memory.
Evidence: Experiment 2 Orthogonal, Hidden, Nuts-in-a-can
Color Perception & Conceptualization
Color Perception & Conceptualization
A more recent hypothesis is that the order reflects communicative efficiency.
Languages start with color labels that are more informative for object identification and contrast.
Language & Personality
It is a common observation or claim that language affects personality.
Many bi/multilinguals believe they have different personalities speaking different languages.
However, there are two important confounds:
Last Words