Exam 1 Review Language and Cognition

According to Thagard? • What is the central hypothesis of Cognitive Science? • What does CRUM stand for? What does it say? • Which analogy does CRUM use in order to understand the mind?

-Thinking can best be understood in terms of representational structures in the mind and computational procedures that operate on those structures. -Computational and Representational Understanding of Mind. This is an approach to understanding the mind based on the central hypothesis. -CRUM compares the mind to a computer.

Which are some of the versions of linguistic determinism that Pinker considers "banal"? Which are the ones he considers "radical"?

1-5 (knowledge from reading and conversation, sentences frame events, stock of words shows what speakers deal with, language is thought in a slack way, and names affect thought patterns) are banal. 8-10 (language profoundly affects reasoning, medium of thought uses a person's known actual words and sentences, and communication between cultures w/ very different languages is impossible).

For Pinker, what is required to establish linguistic determinism? Why does he think that studies such as those carried out by Levinson and his team fail with respect to all of the requirements he lists?

1. Language A and B have differences. 2. There are cognitive differences between speakers of A and B. 3. The difference in 2 is caused by the difference in 1. He thinks these studies fail because they are two ambiguous and don't exclude other factors. The causation is lacking.

According to Gentner and Goldin-Meadow, what is "the dominant position of cognitive psychologists in the last few decades"?

1: human conceptual structure is relatively constant in its features across cultures 2: conceptual structure and semantic structure are closely coupled.

How, in Whorf's view, did these alleged discoveries challenge the notion of a "natural logic"?

Because language affects thought, no individual can describe nature completely impartially and must subscribe to and be affected by the rules of their language.

Which are some of the main objections (methodological or otherwise) to Whorf's original formulation and defense of linguistic relativism/determinism?

Circular linguistic analyses, ineffective methodology, and incorrect data were among Whorf's shortcomings. Brown and Lenneberg argued that Whorf was guilty of circularity, not separating non-linguistic events, and awkward translations.

How does Descartes explain the differences between humans and non-humans?

Descartes says that humans have extended and non-extended components, while animals only have extended components, arguing for dualism in the human body.

What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (SWH)?

Essentially that the only conceptual distinctions we can make are those encoded in our language.

What is a linguistic "frame of reference" (FoR)? Which are the three FoRs that Levinson and his collaborators distinguish (as presented in, e.g., Majid et al, 2004)?

Frames of reference are coordinate systems used to compute and specify the location of objects with respect to other objects. The three distinguished are relative, absolute, and intrinsic.

According to Swoyer, which are the two claims embodied by the "interesting versions" of the linguistic relativity hypothesis?

Linguistic diversity: languages can differ in substantial ways from each other. Linguistic influence (determinism): Features of a person's language influence how they think in a systematic way.

Why does Pinker think that natural languages, such as English, are inadequate as vehicles of thought (as opposed to means of communication)?

Natural languages do not often code for ambiguity, have a lack of logical explicitness, have co-reference, have "deixis" (aspects that can only be understood in a conversation or text, and have synonymy.

What is the distinction, reported (but not endorsed) by Whorf, between "natural logic" and the "logics" of particular languages?

Natural logic is universal , depends on logic and reason, follows rationale from nature, and formulates thoughts, while logics of languages are particular to different communities, depend on social convention, and are only concerned with communication.

What are the main differences between Early Whorfianism and Neowhorfianism? How do Neowhorfians avoid the objections leveled against the early version?

Neowhorfianism uses new evidence (linguistic, new domains, new/better experimental results) and is less ambitious than early Whorfianism. Neowhorfians often use the thinking for speaking hypothesis and are more cautious and use better experiments than predecessors.

Which examples of thought without language, and of non-linguistic thought, does he discuss? • Which one of Elbourne's versions of the Sapir-Whorf thesis is clearly refuted by these cases?

Pinker cites individuals with aphasia, deaf children without language who construct it on their own, Ildefonse (deaf immigrant from Mexico who quickly learned to communicate), babies' sensitivity to numbers, monkeys can determine relationships, and reasoning reported by people to occur non-linguistically. This would refute the strong hypothesis.

For Pinker, which is the "central agenda for psychology set by the computational theory"?

Psychologists are trying to figure out what representations and processors the brain has.

What is the Language of Thought Hypothesis (LOTH)?

Public words and sentences are paired with private words and sentences (using "tokens").

Which versions of Whorfianism do Reines and Prinz reject and which ones do they favor? What are their reasons for doing so? • How do Habitual and Ontological Whorfianism differ from Trivial Whorfianism? • How do they differ from Radical Whorfianism?

Radical and Trivial Whorfianism are rejected and Habitual and Ontological Whorfianism are favored. Trivial simply focuses on things words draw attention to while Habitual and Ontological describe some effects on cognition made by language. These theories describe tendencies while radical argues that natural language determines all thought.

What kind of evidence does Descartes propose for distinguishing rational beings from non-rational ones?

Test #1: non-rational beings can't respond to the sense of all said in their presence. They do not use words and/or other signs and do not use topics that present themselves Test#2: Actions must be entirely determined by the "disposition of organs" rather than intelligence for non-rational beings. ex. Sphex Wasp

Describe the results of the "table top" (Mayan vs. Dutch) experiments. What do these (and similar) results show, according to the researchers, about the relation between language and cognition in the domain of spatial reasoning?

The Mayans replicated the relationship of the items in an absolute manner, while the Dutch did so in a relative manner. The researchers argued that their languages did affect their spacial cognition as it led to distinct non-linguistic actions.

What is grammatical gender? What does Boroditsky say about the relationship between (a) the gender that a language L assigns to an object L, and (b) the way in which speakers of L mentally represent the object in question?

The assignment of gender to all nouns in a language. Boroditsky argues that the linguistic categories of gender do influence the ways in which people think of objects.

Which versions of the SWH does Elbourne distinguish?

The only distinctions we can make are those encoded in our language (strong); The only distinctions we can make for some topics are those encoded in our language (restricted); Some patterns of behavior and thought and the ways we habitually or stereotypically think of them are affected by our language (watered-down)

According to Whorf, what did linguists find when they "became able to examine critically and scientifically a large number of languages of widely different patterns"?

They found that the "background linguistic instrument" of each language is not only an instrument for shaping thoughts but also influences how we formulate ideas.

Which kinds of evidence does Whorf use to argue for the influence of linguistic structure on thought and behavior?

Two classes of words in English (nouns and verbs) that are absolute distinctions vs. the Hopi language which has different distinctions (one word for all flying things), as well as Aztec languages (cold, ice, and snow as same word) and Eskimo languages (words for snow).

In which sense is LOTH opposed to SWH?

While LOTH assumes the world affects thought which is expressed through language, the SWH argues that language affects thought in the reverse manner.

Which linguistic and cognitive domains have been experimentally studied by Neowhorfians? What kinds of experimental tasks have been employed?

grammatical gender (Boroditsky, Shmidt, + Phillips w/ object name memorization, object descriptions, Gumbuzi language, picture similarity), space/FOR(Tzeltal vs. Dutch testing)

What is "thinking for speaking", and what is involved in it? How does Slobin's position differ from classic versions of relativism/determinism (as attributed by him to Humboldt and Whorf)?

thinking for speaking is a form of thought mobilized for communication, which involves picking characteristics of objects and events that a) fit some conceptualization of the event and b) are readily codable in the language. Slobin only talks about how thinking for speaking is affected by language rather than all thought.