A Concept Without Words
Posted on August 26, 2004
Filed Under Culture, Language/Linguistics |
If a society has words that translate to “black” and “white,” but has no words for any other colors, do the people who speak that language understand the concept of color? There were studies that originally concluded that language determines thought; if there are no words for a concept in a certain languages, its speakers do not comprehend the concept the missings words describe.
This test on colors may not be relevant to the hypothesis, argues the author of an article in The Economist. A more reliable test of the original hypothesis might deal with the concept of numbers.
It’s my belief that in isolated cultures, words develop for concepts that are already important to the society. They may or may not comprehend other concepts that cannot be clearly or easily expressed in the language, but that doesn’t matter. For whatever reason, that society just doesn’t find the concept important enough to warrant words. Instead of language influencing culture (which it does, just not in this example), culture is creating the language.
This wouldn’t hold true for languages that are more derivative. In Western culture, language traits have been passed down for thousands of years. Many words are inherited for conepts that might not have the same relevance today, but that is not common. It’s more common for word usage to shift so existing words become usable for new ideas or for new words to be formed to describe new concepts, after the concepts already exist. Comprehension is the driving force, not language.
Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.