Pinker and Whorfian hypothesis

Yuanruo Xu
Language Development
March 15th, 2015

Culture and Language

Whether language acquisition is a human instinct or not has been discussed by linguists for a long time. As human beings are able to respond and learn all kinds of language patterns that expose to them, and children can come up with their own language, it is obvious to say that language is a human instinct. However, children are not able to learn and master a language without being exposed to a normal language-speaking environment, which can be defined as a normal social life. Therefore, I support Whorfian Hypothesis and think that language is influenced under the social condition.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis states that an individual’s comprehension of the world is determined by his or her background linguistics system. In other words, languages used within his or her culture, influence his or her thoughts, ideas, and view of the world. The strong version of the hypothesis claims that languages bind all human thoughts and actions. The weaker version says that language shapes our thinking and behavior. Explanation of this hypothesis will be more understandable by examples, especially when it involves cultural differences. If a culture values certain ideas more than another culture, this culture tends to have a greater variety of words to express that idea. For example, in English, there are around twenty words related to family relationships: father, mother, cousin, aunt, uncle, etc. However, in Chinese, there are about seventy words, which is a result of Confucianism, which emphasizes the value of family, being widely spread in China. Another obvious example to explain the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is “time”. Whorf explains his hypothesis with the concept of “time”, which is one of the most common nouns in the English language. Most Western people view time in three major tenses: past, present, and future. The English language has a cultural form of time units: decade, year, month, day, etc. There are various other cultural forms such as histories or calendars. Nevertheless, the Hopis have a different concept of time: objective and subjective. The objective is the facts that exist, and the subjective is something that is going to happen in the future. In other words, rather than the tenses of past, present and future, there are things that have individual life cycles like growing, declining, and any other form that mother nature does. Therefore, Hopis view the present (objective) as a future (subjective) that can come to pass.
By comparing English and Hopi, we can acknowledge that the norm of ‘time’ is different in different cultures. Consequently, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis seems reasonable as each group of people thinks and acts differently by the form of cultural language. Various languages carve up and sketch the world in different ways. This not only underlies that the language one speaks will affect the way in which he thinks about the world but that it will also influence one’s way of reasoning in different circumstances.

The Language Instinct Steven Pinker's goal in his book The Language Instinct was to argue for the nature of language acquisition. His opponent was Whorf, who proposed the idea of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Pinker disagrees with Whorf’s exploration about the Hopi concept of time in the forms of Hopi language. Whorf used the Hopi language as an example to prove how different languages produce different types of thinking in peoples. When Hopi is translated literally to English, it is very awkward and difficult to understand. Whorf sees this strange translation as a clear representation that the Hopi have different understandings of words compared to English speakers. 
Pinker points out that this translation is just a product of Whorf's beliefs about Hopi thinking, since Whorf has already determined that the Hopi’s concept of time must be different from that of an English speaker. Pinker points out that Whorf’s argument is rendered meaningless due to Whorf’s own bias. Pinker states that humans have a specific ‘instinct’ for acquiring languages. He presents a compelling case for a language instinct, particularly when it reflect that nearly everyone, in a wide variety of environments, develops their native language effortlessly, and can discern fine points of grammar and syntax even without fully realizing it. For example, children do not need to experience from their environment in order to develop the complex grammar rules of language. Children are exposed to various words and sentences, but they must generalize to the complex rules of grammar. Children are able to creative sentences that follow these grammar rules. They have to have some instincts to support them to do so.
For Pinker, Chomsky's writings are believable. Chomsky claims that all humans speak a single language, and that is based on the same grammar rule, called Universal Grammar. Universal Grammar contains of syntactic, morphological, and phonological rules. One of the most interesting discoveries is that there appears to be a common structure in all phrases in all the world's languages. In Pinker’s opinion, Children can indicate the grammars of all language that tells them how to find out the syntactic patterns out of the speech of their parents. When children learn a particular language, they do not have to learn a long list of rules, because they are born knowing the Universal Grammar. This ability is called instinct.

Critics
After I read Whorf's works, I notice that most opponents such as Pinker, pay attention to the phrases Whorf used in his book instead of his theory, such as how Whorf does not understand the Hopi fully or how mentalese must precede words. However, Whorf includes more detailed analyses as evidence to support his opinion. The most interested one for me is in his comparison between Hopi and English. Whorf begins his comparison at the very basic level of numeration. In English, numbers are used to describe objects. For example, we can say "three dogs" when we see there are three dogs, We can also say the next "three days" when the extra days are subjective and must be imagined in our conscious. When we use "three dogs" however, the dogs we see may not be of the same size, but when we say the next "three days", the days must be of equal length. On this case, we count "three days" by recycling the one-day three times in our imagination. Time, by itself, is a subjective "becoming later", and English speakers objectify it by dividing time into single quantities.
Now, someone may say that this is the case universally because that is the only way days can be perceived. However, Whorf proposes: "a likeness of cyclist to aggregates is not unmistakably given by experience prior to language, or it would be found in all languages, and it is not" (Whorf, 139). It means that if our ways of perceiving and counting imaginary objects are so much a part of commonsense, then all languages should do the same. If they did not, then our way of thinking is not universally, which implies that our language influences how we perceive imaginary objects such as time.
This is the case for the Hopi. They can only count concrete nouns, such as dogs, and cannot do so for imaginary nouns like days. For example, "They stayed ten days", in Hopi language, it says: "They left on the eleventh day". According to Whorf: "instead of our linguistically promoted objectification of that datum of consciousness we call 'time', the Hopi language has not laid down any pattern that would cloak the subjective 'becoming later' that is the essence of time" (Whorf, 140). It means that things happening "later and later" instead of happening "in cycles".
Whorf uses this theory to discuss more complex linguistic rules. He then talks about the conceptions of count nouns and mass nouns. In English, people make a distinction between count nouns and mass nouns. Count nouns are those objects that have clear boundaries, like dogs, cats, apples, etc. Mass nouns are those that are continuous, like salt, water, money, etc. To count mass nouns, we need a container word. Hopi, however, does not have mass nouns. All nouns are countable. Nouns for water are still indefinite, but do not imply lack of outline or size. Therefore, they do not have to think of objects as their form. The implications of this theory can be seen in the model of time. Time for us is a mass noun and it has to be quantified by container nouns, such as "an hour of time" or "a moment of time". We cannot say "one time", or "two times" the way we want it to mean. For English speaker, time is carved into quantities. For the Hopi, however, phases such as "morning" are almost like adverbs, not nouns. The word "summer" means when it is hot and dry. Our conception of "It's summer" translates into Hopi is more likely to be "It's hot and dry right now". Thus there is no "This summer" in Hopi, only "Summer now", "Summer recently". Because they have no form containing a formless item, they have no need to quantify "time" into cycling days or summers. It is culture that influences our language. We are often so primed by the opposition to the "Whorfian hypothesis" that we read Whorf as being completely deterministic when he is actually describing a dynamic and fluid viewpoint.