Language and thought


The notion that language influences thought has a long history in a variety of fields. There are two bodies of thought forming around this debate. One body of thought stems from linguistics and is known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. There is a strong and a weak version of the hypothesis which argue for more or less influence of language on thought. The strong version, linguistic determinism, argues that without language there is and can be no thought while the weak version, linguistic relativity, supports the idea that there are some influences from language on thought. And on the opposing side, there are 'language of thought' theories which believe that public language is inessential to private thought. LOTH theories address the debate of whether thought is possible without language which is related to the question of whether language evolved for thought. These ideas are difficult to study because it proves challenging to parse the effects of culture versus thought versus language in all academic fields.
The main use of language is to transfer thoughts from one mind, to another mind. The bits of linguistic information that enter into one person's mind, from another, cause people to entertain a new thought with profound effects on his world knowledge, inferencing, and subsequent behavior. Language neither creates nor distorts conceptual life. Thought comes first, while language is an expression. There are certain limitations among language, and humans cannot express all that they think.

Language of thought

Language of thought theories rely on the belief that mental representation has linguistic structure. Thoughts are "sentences in the head", meaning they take place within a mental language. Two theories work in support of the language of thought theory. Causal syntactic theory of mental practices hypothesizes that mental processes are causal processes defined over the syntax of mental representations. Representational theory of mind hypothesizes that propositional attitudes are relations between subjects and mental representations. In tandem, these theories explain how the brain can produce rational thought and behavior. All three of these theories were inspired by the development of modern logical inference. They were also inspired by Alan Turing's work on causal processes that require formal procedures within physical machines.
LOTH hinges on the belief that the mind works like a computer, always in computational processes. The theory believes that mental representation has both a combinatorial syntax and compositional semantics. The claim is that mental representations possess combinatorial syntax and compositional semantic—that is, mental representations are sentences in a mental language. Alan Turing's work on physical machines implementation of causal processes that require formal procedures was modeled after these beliefs.
Another prominent linguist, Stephen Pinker, developed this idea of a mental language in his book The Language Instinct. Pinker refers to this mental language as mentalese. In the glossary of his book, Pinker defines mentalese as a hypothetical language used specifically for thought. This hypothetical language houses mental representations of concepts such as the meaning of words and sentences.

Scientific hypotheses

Counting

Different cultures use numbers in different ways. The Munduruku culture for example, has number words only up to five. In addition, they refer to the number 5 as "a hand" and the number 10 as "two hands". Numbers above 10 are usually referred to as "many".
Perhaps the most different counting system from that of modern Western civilisation is the "one-two-many" system used by the Pirahã people. In this system, quantities larger than two are referred to simply as "many". In larger quantities, "one" can also mean a small amount and "many" a larger amount. Research was conducted in the Pirahã culture using various matching tasks. These are non-linguistic tasks that were analyzed to see if their counting system or more importantly their language affected their cognitive abilities. The results showed that they perform quite differently from, for example, an English speaking person who has a language with words for numbers more than two. For example, they were able to represent numbers 1 and 2 accurately using their fingers but as the quantities grew larger, their accuracy diminished. This phenomenon is also called the "analog estimation", as numbers get bigger the estimation grows. Their declined performance is an example of how a language can affect thought and great evidence to support the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.

Orientation

Language also seems to shape how people from different cultures orient themselves in space. For instance, people from the Australian Aboriginal community Pormpuraaw define space relative to the observer. Instead of referring to location in terms like "left", "right", "back" and "forward", most Aboriginal Nations, such as the Kuuk Thaayorre, use cardinal-direction terms – north, south, east and west. For example, speakers from such cultures would say "There is a spider on your northeast leg" or "Pass the ball to the south southwest". In fact, instead of "hello", the greeting in such cultures is "Where are you going?" and sometimes even "Where are you coming from?" Such greeting would be followed by a directional answer "To the northeast in the middle distance". The consequence of using such language is that the speakers need to be constantly oriented in space, or they would not be able to express themselves properly, or even get past a greeting. Speakers of such languages that rely on absolute reference frames have a much greater navigational ability and spatial knowledge compared to speakers of languages that use relative reference frames. In comparison with English users, speakers of languages such as Kuuk Thaayorre are also much better at staying oriented even in unfamiliar spaces – and it is in fact their language that enables them to do this.

Color

Language may influence color processing. Having more names for different colors, or different shades of colors, makes it easier both for children and for adults to recognize them. Research has found that all languages have names for black and white and that the colors defined by each language follow a certain pattern.

Other schools of thought

The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis is the premise of the 2016 science fiction film Arrival. The protagonist explains that "the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis is the theory that the language you speak determines how you think".