Language and Mind (by Edward Vajda)

       Linguistics is the science of human language.  Although the modern term 'linguistics' derives from the Latin word for tongue, lingua, the true organ of language is the human mind.  We even call languages "tongues," but language is first and foremost a mental process that only secondarily involves the tongue, lips, and vocal cords--the so-called organs of speech.  It is often repeated that our complex language separates us from all other species--that language is the hallmark of our unique human intellect.  A discussion of the connection between language and mind can provide a fitting introduction to our course, Linguistics 201. 

       Interest in the connection between language and mind developed thousands of years ago in India and Greece and probably in other places as well.  The ancient Greeks believed that the structure of language mirrored patterns of thought.  About 2500 years ago, such Greek philosophers as Plato and Aristotle believed their speech represented a perfect form and considered all other languages to be imperfect and indicative of less developed habits of thinking. 

       The concept of evaluating languages as superior or inferior thinking tools passed to Rome and eventually became firmly entrenched in European scholarly tradition.  During the Middle Ages, Latin and classical Greek were regarded as superior forms of communication.  Medieval thinkers wrote in Latin rather than their own native tongues, which they considered inferior to Latin for any intellectual endeavor.  European scholars rarely paid serious attention to languages other than those of Europe or the Mediterranean basin.  It should be noted that a similar linguistic chauvinism developed among the Chinese and other non-European cultures. 

       Beginning in the 15th century, however, European explorers began to encounter the native languages spoken on other continents.  Not being linguists, some of these first explorers described languages encountered in the Caribbean and West Africa as "grunts scarcely different from those of animals."   Unfamiliar languages were automatically considered inferior and incomplete.  The 16th century Age of Discovery gave a new boost to the notion of the "primitive language". 

       Only quite recently, in the last two centuries, did European philologists, which is an old-fashioned term for linguist, begin to give any serious attention to languages that were very different from their own.  By the mid-1800's anthropologists and linguists were busy recording in great detail the structure of aboriginal languages in the Americas, South Asia, Australia and Oceana.  As it turned out, these languages not only differed greatly from those of Europe--they also showed great internal complexity.  

       Let's look at some aspects that create linguistic diversity across the world's languages:

Phonology

--Type of sounds: In European languages, all sounds are made by modifying air as it is breathed out of the lungs.  Not so in other languages, such as !kung, Swahili, Georgian, and Quileute.

--Number of sounds: European languages tend to have about 40 distinctive sounds. Hawaiian, Rotokas (South Pacific) have fewer than 20. Kabardian, Abkhaz (Caucasus Mountains) have over 80, with only one or two vowels.     

Morphology

--How words are built: (in European lang. the words add endings for plural and for a few meanings such as possession, object) cf. Finnish (15 cases)  vs. Chinese with no endings.

--Length of words and complexity of meaning: cf. Chinese, Viet.  (words are indivisible, usually one syllable) vs. Kazakh (Central Asian Turkic) agglutination: qam-sÉz-dan-dÉr-Él-ma-an-dÉq-tan meaning 'in view of the fact that it wasn't guaranteed'.

Syntax--how words combine to form sentences

--different word connections in the sentence: object markers for verbs in Georgian

--little difference between a word and a sentence: Nootka (inikwihlminih'isita 'several small fires were burning in the house')

       The scholars who devoted themselves to accurate descriptions of aboriginal languages are known as descriptive linguists (the most prominent was the American linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir, a student of the noted anthropologist Franz Boas. As Sapir's findings were published, it became obvious that all human languages represent extremely complex systems of communication.  Not everyone accepted this conclusion immediately.  A few skeptics even accused the descriptivists of fabricating data on Native American languages.       

       As linguists studied languages from all over the world, they marveled at the striking variety of language forms.  The notion of how a language could be structured had to be revised continually.  This process of revision continues to this day as linguists document aboriginal languages of such areas as the Amazon basin and the highlands of New Guinea.

       Given all the new information on language structure gathered during the past century, how did scholars reevaluate the traditional ideas regarding language and mind?

       First to change was the notion that languages could be inferior and superior in terms of their structure.  The descriptive linguists revealed that even the most remote tribe with the most rudimentary technology possessed a language which is highly complex and which presented an incredible intellectual challenge for any adult to learn as a second language.  For instance, the Choctaw language had been used as a code in World War One and Navajo later proved to be an unbreakable code in World War Two against the Japanese.  Today, it is quite obvious that people living with Stone Age technology speak languages as complex and versatile as those spoken in the most highly industrialized society.  There are no primitive languages.  Virtually no linguist today would disagree with this statement.

       The second change came in assessing the nature of the connection between language and mind.  Remember, European culture beginning with Greece assumed that the structure of language mirrored the structure of thought. When it became obvious during the past century that all languages are structurally very complex, some descriptivists began to ask the following question: What do the vast differences in structure mean for the study of the human mind?  Do radically different languages indicate equally extreme differences in the mental habits of the people speaking them?   

Language structure -------???-----mind, thought processes

Do languages constitute separate dimensions of thought?  Or are the differences in language form superficial vehicles for the deeper unity of human thought?

       One scholar who attempted to answer this question was the American Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941).  Whorf was a descriptive linguist who became fascinated with the connection between language and mind. By profession he was a fire inspector; his hobby was the study of Native American languages, particularly the Hopi language of the American Southwest.  He noted how the differences between Hopi and English grammar seemed to have striking parallels in the cultural differences between the Hopi tribe and European American society.

           English (SAE) has many tenses, spatial metaphors for time: both objects as well as time periods can be described in terms of spaces (long, short) or units (five days). And European culture is permeated with a preoccupation for time, history, record keeping.

               Hopi, on the other hand, has no grammatical tense; actions are expressed in terms of intensity or repetition. Time would have to be specified using adverbs like 'now', 'once', etc.  The Hopi had difficulty adjusting to the timetables and schedules of European-American culture.  Whorf believed that the structure of their language was the root cause of their difficulty.   Whereas other descriptive linguists had developed the concept of linguistic relativity, the idea that each language has its own unique structure which has a noticeable effect on the world view of its speakers, Whorf went a step further and developed the notion of linguistic determinism: the structure of language determines and limits the patterns of habitual thought in a society.  In its strictest interpretation, linguistic determinism is the belief that language imprisons the mind.  This notion came to be known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (Because Sapir only held the concept of linguistic relativity, some people call the idea that language imprisons the mind the Whorfian Hypothesis).

       If this hypothesis were true--and it can easily be demonstrated that linguistic determinism is too strongly stated--then it would hold equally for all languages: concepts absent from the structure of a given language should necessarily be absent or deficient in the culture of the speakers--and this correlation should hold true across languages, even for European languages such as English.  This is far from the case.  In fact, there is no broad evidence in support of any strong version of linguistic determinism.

    1) Other languages that lack grammatical tense: Chinese, Malay.

    2) Grammatical categories lacking in English: aspect, evidential.

    3) Gender in English and Georgian.

Conclusion: parallels between language structure and thought patterns seem to be random, not the result of a strict cause and effect relationship.

language structure <------------thought <------culture, environment

                                            ----------->                   -------->

       This conclusion raises yet another question.  Why is it that language structure has such a relatively minor effect on human thought?  The main reason seems to be that humans are innately creative.  And it is this creative principle that drives language; the particular form of language seems to be relatively superficial.  Let's examine the effect of human creativity on the use of language.

       It is obvious that human language changes in response to environmental and cultural changes. This is because humans are versatile and adaptive--in other words, "creative". This effect of creativity on language is evident in many ways.

1) Concepts that become extremely important to a society will acquire more elaborate means of expression

   a) Yupik has many terms for specific varieties of snow and ice, 16 words for seal.

   b) Maasai have an elaborate vocabulary for cattle, as do the Arabs for camels.

   c) The English of Beowulf used 36 epithets to describe the ocean and over two dozen to express the concept "hero."

2) On the other hand, concepts rarely or never experienced naturally have few or no ready made terms of expression.

    a) Many languages of the tropics have a single word for snow and ice.

    b) Hopi  masa'taka means bird, plane or insect.

    c) Tribes in the Amazon rain forest have no word for ocean, sea.

As a result of natural human creativity, all languages are in constant flux.  When new concepts appear, the existing language form does not prevent the speakers from grasping the concepts.  Instead, the language itself changes to accommodate the new concepts--and often changes very rapidly.  Concepts that were once important may lose their importance and the language gradually loses some of the wealth of ways to express them (example: two dozen words for hero in Beowulf). Changes occur fastest in vocabulary and phraseology, slower in grammar.

Ways language changes:

   1) borrowing from other languages: zebra, glasnost, 75% of Engl. words are borrowed, mostly from Norman French.

   2) coining new terms--bubble, nerd

   3) new combinations of old words, called collocations

         a) spring snow, powder snow

         b) ring around the collar, heartburn

   4) new meaning of existing word

         a) in Shakespeare: roses stink; torpedo (used to mean "mine")

         b) Apache pit, ynda, etc.

       Because humans are creative, any human language is capable of expressing any thought the mind can devise.  This is precisely why the difference in individual language structure is not decisive in limiting the habitual thought processes of the speakers.  Language form is merely a small hurdle on the way to new thoughts--not an insurmountable prison. Human creativity molds language into a pliable tool for expressing new thoughts.  This is why language is constantly reshaped by new experience.  The form of language, in turn, has much less of an effect on thought patterns (although verbal misunderstandings are obviously capable of causing problems).  Rather than stifle creativity, language is the most versatile vehicle for expressing our creativity.

       Nevertheless, the form of language is of great important to linguists for several reasons.

       1) First, the form of language is interesting when comparing language structures found in different languages. Languages do not differ in terms of their creative potential but rather in terms of the level upon which particular distinctions are realized in each particular language. What is expressed concisely in one language requires a phrase in another language. (Give examples of aspect and evidentiality;  also words like Swahili mumagamagama "someone who habitually loses things" and Russian opoxmelitsya "to eat the hair of the dog that bit you.") Linguists study how each particular language organizes the expression of concepts. Such cross-language comparisons fall under a branch of linguistics called language typology.

       2) Second, because languages change more slowly than the environment in which they are spoken, languages contain all sorts of indications of bygone culture. For the historian and the anthropologists, the form of language provides a special window into the past: ursus/bear/ medved.  time/tide/vremya.  Study a language--any language--and you will learn much about the history of the people who speak it. You will also be taking a crucial step toward understanding the contemporary culture of the speakers.  But, contrary to any strict belief in linguistic determinism, studying a language will not help you predict the future of the people who speak it.  The future will unfold with little regard for present-day language structure.  The language will be shaped by that future, not the other way around.

       3) And finally, as you will become increasingly aware, languages are inherently interesting in their own right.  We all are drawn to language from our earliest years of childhood. Learning to speak and understand language is the first and perhaps most singularly human task we ever perform. The more fortunate among us become aware of language as an object of scholarly study.  And this course introduces you to every aspect of the study of language, so I invite you to stay.