english speakers: sky, blueberries, south pacific ocean japanese speakers: sky, blueberries, south...

English speakers: sky, blueberries, South Pacific Ocean

Japanese speakers: sky, blueberries, South Pacific Ocean, lawn, freshly shaven scalp, green traffic light.

Do people who speak different languages think about and experience the world differently?

What do you think?

The horse and I were riding about› Joint endeavor without expressed

subject/object relationship I was riding a horse

› Active subject, passive object

Does this small bit of information provide a window into the psychological world of English speakers vs. Navajo

Relationship with nature Active vs. passive rel. with

environment

English› Good morning, how are you?› Fine

› Owambo Walelepo Eh Onawa? Eh. Oshili Nawa? Eh/ ahawe…..blah, blah, blah

Respect for elders

Mistrust/lying

6912 living language in the world› Ethnologue

› http://www.ethnologue.com/

Whorf & Sapir Linguistic relativity hypothesis

Strongest version states that we can’t do much thinking without the relevant words available

Researchers now believe that thinking is not entirely determined by the language we speak but rather HOW we talk about people, objects and event

Different languages provide different ease at which to talk about these issues.

›qanuk 'snowflake'

› qanir- 'to snow'

› qanunge- 'to snow' [NUN]

› qanugglir- 'to snow' [NUN]

kaneq 'frost'

› kaner- 'be frosty/frost sth.‘

› kanevvluk 'fine snow/rain particles

› kanevcir- to get fine snow/rain particles

› natquik 'drifting snow/etc'

› natqu(v)igte- 'for snow/etc. to drift along ground'nevluk 'clinging debris/

› nevlugte- 'have clinging debris/...'lint/snow/dirt...'

› (6) Fallen snow on the groundaniu [NS] 'snow on ground'

› aniu- [NS] 'get snow on ground'

› apun [NS] 'snow on ground'

› qanikcaq 'snow on ground'

› qanikcir- 'get snow on ground'

› (7) Soft, deep fallen snow on the groundmuruaneq 'soft deep snow'

› (8) Crust on fallen snowqetrar- [NSU] 'for snow to crust'

› qerretrar- [NSU] 'for snow to crust'

› (9) Fresh fallen snow on the groundnutaryuk 'fresh snow' [HBC]

› (10) Fallen snow floating on waterqanisqineq 'snow floating on water'

› (11) Snow bankqengaruk 'snow bank' [Y, HBC]

› (12) Snow blockutvak 'snow carved in block'

› (13) Snow cornicenavcaq [NSU] 'snow cornice, snow (formation) about to collapse'

› navcite- 'get caught in an avalanche'

› (14) Blizzard, snowstormpirta 'blizzard, snowstorm'

› pircir- 'to blizzard'

› pirtuk 'blizzard, snowstorm'

› (15) Severe blizzardcellallir-, cellarrlir- 'to snow heavily'

› pir(e)t(e)pag- 'to blizzard severely'

› pirrelvag- 'to blizzard severely'

In many African languages, there is no word for aunt, uncle, cousin.

Only brother, sister

Common question after someone says,“this is my brother” is “Same mother

same father?”

Cultural influence, mental processes, and language are dynamic processes that occur simultaneously‘talking to learn’

As children verbally interact, then internalize language and then use it to organize thought

Language is hard wired. Grammer/lingistic structure, etc.

At birth infants have the entire range of human language possibilities.

Babbling across cultures shows remarkable similarity

What happens then that matters

Nga nga… Tatetate

Dadadad Mememem

MAMAMAM

Ieo ieo ieo Critical period for some phonemes is 10

months

Acknowledge and celebrate sounds in own language

Sounds not in native language are dismissed as babbling and not enforced

Infants and toddlers quickly learn a language

Use to think these children were slow

What is happening is they have more rewards to sift through when constructing language.

Overall bias in infancy to use nouns

No difference in the time they use nouns

Use of verbs varies across cultures› Year one in US› Year 3 in Gusii

Large differences in creativity: need to look at definition› 1. novel 2. useful and appropriate

Large differences in self expression› High context cultures, low context› Pen experiment