Dissociating language and circumstance: Eskimos to Bermuda.

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Dissociating language and circumstance Eskimos
to Bermuda.
Move Americans to Vail or Aspen
sugar granule powder
OR
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FALC0NRY
THOUGH THAT HER JESSES WERE MY DEAR HEARTSTRINGS,
ID WHISTLE HER OFF AND LET HER DOWN THE WIND,
TO PREY AT FORTUNE.
OTHELLO, III, I, 260-263
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Correlations of language and thought
In short, pace Li and Gleitman, the evidence
remains that the frames of reference used in
peoples language match those used in their
nonlinguistic cognition. (Levinson, 2003).
Remember those Eskimos and their snow words.
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N
42nd
10th
S
5
N
42nd
10th
S
6
N
42nd
10th
S
7
N
42nd
10th
S
8
W
E
42nd
10th
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Two sane manipulations
Two languages vary in their labeling
practices. Does the labeling predict sorting or
memory? (as in e.g., Papafragou, Massey and
Gleitmans st Study of path/manner, or Li and
Gleitman on tight fit/ loose fit).
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Names for artifacts (Malt, Sloman, Gennari, 2003)
In English, a plastic container for holding
drinks, having a straw and the shape of Mickey
Mouse, is called a water bottle, but a plastic
container for holding drinks, having a straw and
in the shape of a bear, is called a juice box.
60 photos of containers found in homes,
grocery, and drug stores in China, Argentina,
USA, e.g., asperin bottle, baby bottle, peanut
butter jar, mustard jar, milk jug, margerine tub,
juice box.
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1. Sorts overall similarity, similarity of
   physical features, similarity of functional
   features.
2. Names.

The various sorts intercorrelated approx .94. The
names intercorrelated approx .33. The categories
of one language were not neat subsets or
supersets of each other. A model of factors
entering into linguistic categorization showed
that different factors counted in different
languages but these were not the factors that
entered into sorting.
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Fundamental spatial concepts
ON
Munnich Landau, 2001
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ABOVE
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Memory for displacements
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Crossed by contact
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When language effects are achieved I. Boundary
effects

• The stimulus is highly ambiguous with regard to
  the factors varied . (For clear cases, no
  effect).
• Language is explicit in the situation This is my
  blicket. See that blicket? (For clear cases,
  no effect).

An internal dialogue This guy is speaking
English. He introduces a new expression. What
proportion of Ns in English are count? What
proportion of NPs in English have count-nouns
as their heads? Blicket is probably a count
noun. And hence probably encodes an object
rathre than a mass. And thus probably will
label a rigid shape.
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See that blicket? Find some more.(((Imai and
Gentner)
A regular T-like shape. Of some new material. A
puddle-like shape. Of some new
material. English Water versus A
cube Japanese No count/mass morphology.
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(No Transcript)
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When language effects are achieved II. The
belief that syntax to semantics mappings are
arbitrary and variable.

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Using Linguistic Context
Hes sebbing
R. Brown, 1957
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Using Linguistic Context
Look, a seb!
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Using Linguistic Context
Some seb
Brown, 1957
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When language effects are achieved III. When
correlations seem like causal relations

Caiuses, effects, confusions
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Is deduction from structure Whorfian?
It was shown experimentally that young
English-speaking children take the part-of-spech
membership of a new word as a clue to its
meaning. In this way they make use of the
semantic distinctiveness of the parts of speech.
It seems quite probable that speakers of other
languages will also know about the semantics of
their grammatical categories. Since these are
strikingly different in unrelated languages, the
speakers in question may have quite different
cognitive categories. It remains to be
determined how seriously and how generally
thought is affected by these semantic
distinctions.
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X
At the Northeast Corner
At the circle
Northeast of the circle.
X
X
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Cheng, 1986 Gallistel, 1990 Hermer Spelke,
1994
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The language format supports new thought (Spelke,
2003)
given the geometric modulea rat or child who
has seen an object hidden to the left of a long
wall searches reliably to the left of that
wallChildren therefore may learn the meaning of
the term left by relating expresions involving
that term to purely geometric representations.Chi
ldren also have relatively modular systems for
learning about color and other properties of
objects, permitting learning of wall and blue.
The combinatorial machinery of language allows
children to formulate and understand expressions
such as left of the blue wall with no further
learning. This expression cannot be formulated
readily outside of language, because it crosscuts
the childs encapsulated core domains. Thanks to
the language faculty, however, this expression
serves to represent the conjunction of
information quickly and flexibly. Such use may
underly adults flexible spatial performance.
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My response to Fodors argument is to grant it.
Children learn many of the words of their
language by relating those words to preexisting
concepts. Moreover, children cannot learn,
through language or any other means, any concepts
that they cannot already represent. If children
cannot represent the concept left of the bllue
thing, then they cannot learn to represent it.
Natural languages, however, have a magical
property. Once the speaker has learned the terms
of a language and the rules by which these terms
combine, she can represent the meanings of all
grammatical combinations of those terms without
further learning. The compositinal semantics of
natural languages allows children to know the
meanings of new wholes from the meanings of their
parts.Thanks to their cmpositional semantics,
natural languages can expand the childs
conceptual repertoire to include not just the
preexisting core knowledge concepts but also any
new well-formed combination of those concepts.
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Secure the building!
Lucas (5 years) told me about a new exercise
they have in his schoolHe said that in addition
to fire drills they now have Secure the Building.
He explained that when there is a Secure the
Building the children go into the coatroom (which
is good, he said, because you can have a snack
there or read a book). Or if there is a Secure
the Building during music class, the children sit
behind or next to the piano. I asked him why
there are Secure the Buildings and he said in
case something mean is in the school. Like what?
I asked. He said perhaps a cheetah or a
porcupine. I was especially struck by his
uncertainty about what Secure the Building means
It might as well be Securethebuilding or
Ingbuildsecurethe. The main thing is that its
terribly exciting and sometimes you can have a
snack.
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The meaning of look
_____________________________
Look up!
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Blind understanding of color (Landau and Gleitman
1985)

• Red is a color word dirty is not.
• Color is the supernym for color words.
• Can a cow be red?
• I think theyre white or brown.
• Can an idea be green?
• Thats silly. Ideas are only in your
  head, you think about them.
• 4. Mapping onto the hues of things in the world.

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Blind deficit (Landau and Gleitman 1985)

• Color is the supernym for color words.
• Can a cow be red?
• I think theyre white or brown.
• Red is a color word dirty is not.
• Can an idea be green?
• Thats silly. Ideas are only in your
  head, you think about them.
• 4. Mapping onto the hues of things in the world.

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Brown cow brown cow. (and for a large
proportion of A, AN is their intersection.) All
past uses of green modified concrete
objects. A variety of modifiers are restricted
for use with concrete objects, e.g., tall,
furry, sweet. In fact the range of use for
green with this child seems to have been
restricted to - brail-coded crayons (ha ha) -
stacking rings of different sizes
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When language effects are achieved IV. When
they are momentary.

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Mandarin and English speakers conceptions of
time.

• Lera Boroditsky (2001)
• Cognitive Psychology

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Dread events lie ahead. Now they are behind
us. This was true up to our own time. That was
true of all governments down to 1863. Easter is
coming up.
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The circle will win.
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The circle will win.
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Easter precedes Christmas. Labor Day comes after
Memorial Day.
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Fodor is a Whorfian

• Languages have different lexical items (words).
• Words are nondecomposable monads.
• Semantic representations (SR) and conceptual
  representations (CR) are coextensive.
• Then, since we think in CRs, users of diffeent
  languages think differently.
• So it follows that nondompositionalists are
  implicit Whorfians a fact that they do not seem
  to have appreciated.
• (Levinson, 2003).