THROUGH THE LANGUAGE GLASS怎么样

THROUGH THE LANGUAGE GLASS怎么样

77 p6: "A martian scientists would conclude that all earthlings speak dialects of the same language", an idea expressed by Noam Chomsky. 77 p9: culture is something related to a human (or perhaps a chimp) being a part of a society. It is something learned or nurtured. We are not born with a culture innate in us, but we are emerged in culture from the moment we are born. 77 Language puts labels on concepts. Although the labeling process is actually arbitrary, meaning a culture can name any concept with any denotation it wants, the most normal way of doing it, i.e. the way normal people can accept, is that one label corresponds to one cluster of concepts that bear great similarities. Such as "dog" and "cat". It is easier for people to distinguish among the naturally different concepts. And if different concepts are given only one label, that is when confusion takes place. 77 Generally speaking, we are more tolerant if abstract concepts, not material ones, are messed up. 77 p17: However, sometimes even the naturally distinct concepts, such as "we", "hand", "arm", "neck" etc., are labeled differently in different cultures. This is an incursion of culture to the realm of nature. Culture manages to interpret nature according to its own will (like using one word to mean the concepts of both hand and arm). 77 p17: The concept of colors. Indeed, there is no clear boundaries among the colors we denote. In nature, there is only a spectrum where color changes gradually. Then why do cultures put so definite labels on our perceptions of color? 77 p26: Gladstone's research into Homer's works (Iliad and Odyssey) received both compliments and severe critics. One of the problem he had was that people thought he had treated Homer too seriously. The general atmosphere at that time was skepticism, even towards the Holy Bible. How could Gladstone be so sure that the two epics were entirely composed by one man named Homer? Besides, Gladstone's claim that Iliad was a reflection of real historical events was hardly accepted by the general public. People believed that the epics were merely fictions, though a dozen years later, archaeological discover would say otherwise. 77 p30: However, it was not Gladstone's controversial arguments about Homer and his poems that attracted Mr. Deutcher, but his discovery of how people at Homer's time perceive color. Gladstone claimed that the Greeks had a different perception of color compared to us. The world seemed more black and white and less colorful to Homer. 77 pp31-36: Homer described sea and oxen as "wine-looking", suggesting them to be red in color. Besides, he also use "violet" to describe sea, sheep, and iron, while "hyacinth" (another purple-ish color) Odysseus's dark hair. He described twigs, a pale face, and honey as "green". In addition to these evidence, Gladstone actually elaborated other important points to prove that the Greeks in the ancient time might not perceive color the way we do today. 77 p39: Gladstone argues that the reason why Homer did not seem to possess the ability to tell colors apart might be that people at that time could not manipulate or control objects of different colors. For instance, if people could not create blue dyes or raise blue flowers in their gardens, they did not understand how to perceive the color of the ocean or the sky. Blue was unconceivable because it was untouchable and uncontrollable. Anything that man could not take charge of might turn too abstract for him to understand. 77 p40: Unfortunately, Gladstone's argument was not correct. 77 p42; Lazarus Geiger found that the deficiency in describing colors, especially blue, is not limited to Homer's poems, but also prevalent in the Old Testament, Indian poems, etc. It seems that this phenomenon is universal at the ancient times. 77 p44: Geiger used etymology to trace the names of colors back and claimed that in the very initial stage, human beings had no language for color in particular. Besides, our perception of colors began with red and gradually moved on to blue. What is interesting is that it is suggested that the sequence of such color perception is almost universal (other cultures might have taken the same sequence in knowing these colors). Geiger's explanation of human's changing perception of color was an anatomical one, i.e. our eyes are different from our ancestors'. However, this opinion was also recanted later. 77 p46: The train crash in Lagerlunda, Sweden, 1875 marked a significant incidence that might have caused by color blindness (the train engineman being probably unable to distinguish red light). 77 Hugo Magnus's treatise in 1877 stated the possible evolution of color sense in human. People in the ancient time might indeed be color blind, and our current cases of colorblindness could be a vestige from the ancestors. He maintained that it was due to the practice of human retina, by the "stronger" red light to the less "strong" blue and violet light, that human eyes gradually acquired the ability to perceive more and more colors. According to Magnus, this practice continued to the current, and eventually we would be able to see ultraviolet light! Of course, this argument, which was analogous to acquired inheritance, was not valid, but pretty enlightening at that time. 77 Unfortunately, the idea of acquired inheritance was so much imbedded in people's mind that everyone still believed in it even after Darwin had suggested another means of evolution. Post to Darwin's work (as I have pointed out in my reading notes of "the origin of species", Darwin himself was not absolutely convinced of the wrongness of acquired inheritance), it was Weismann's chopping-off-mice-tail experiment (which lasted for five years!) that further suggested that acquired inheritance did not exist. However, even this piece of evidence was neglected by the major science community. 77 p55: When people came to realize that the Larmarckian theory of evolution was not correct, and that human beings could not possibly evolve from almost colorblind to color-sensitive within only thousands of years, they started to question whether it was due to the ancient Greeks' biological difference from us that made them perceive color in a bizarre manner, or due to the cultural difference that made them see colors differently. A debate between nature or culture thus commenced. 77 p61: The fact that some primitive cultures could not tell apart specific colors was finally confirmed after a large scale of questioning was conducted around the world. This fact proved Magnus's theory wrong, that our perception of color could not enhance via "learning". 77 p62: The discovery by Gladstone and Geiger that language for colors, except for black and white, has evolved from red as the beginning to more bluish tint at later stages. However, people's lack of vocabulary for these colors did not mean they could not tell them apart as well. In fact, people lacking the language for certain colors could distinguish them without difficulties, indicating that their biological sense for color was not much different from ours. The major factor that caused the "problem" in their languages was a cultural one not s natural one. 77 p67: Dr. Rivers' research on Torres Straits seriously looked into the color-sense problem that had been stranded for almost twenty years. What he discovered on Murray Island in Torres Straits was almost the same as reported previously. 77 pp.69-75: Thought experiment to allow us to grasp the idea of culture influencing our biological sense when labeling closely related colors. The third thought experiment, which compares our current lack of vocabulary labeling diverse taste with the primitive people's lack of vocabulary labeling different colors, is a very interesting attempt. The reason we are incapable of labeling sophisticated tastes (the ones that combine many tastes together) is that we are only exposed to a very limited amount of tastes in the first place. The tastes we can tangibly manipulate, that of the fruits we can grow or collect for example, become the basic taste elements, or should I say taste vocabulary, that we will use in the future to describe whatever taste we encounter that originates from an abstract source. For the two different sweetnesses, we would call them both sweet, without bothering too much to differentiate the two tastes because they are merely two shades of sweetness, the very basic taste vocabulary we have. However, at the same time, we are not unable to distinguish the two sweetnesses, though if they are completely new to us or very close to each other, we might have hesitation telling them apart. This scenario is just like that in the primitive people or ancient Greeks. For them, the basic vocabulary for colors came from the most common colored objects they could see from the beginning. Perhaps such basic colors were black, white and red. Then, if a new and tangible object with a different color appeared very often, its new color would gradually be given a new label. Yet, if it appeared occasionally, the description of its color would rely on the existent basic color vocabulary. Obviously, if that object is as abstract as the sky, the phenomenon of not being able to give its color a proper name becomes even more severe. Since one cannot manipulate the sky, its color would remain "black", just as if our air smells like the combination of tomato and peach (more tomato like by the way), we would only refer to it, probably with great hesitation, as tomato-like, while an "advanced" civilization with highly sensitive taste would become intrigued by our not being able to name the most obvious taste: tomeach! 77 p85: Berlin and Kay published a book in 1969 named "Basic Color Terms" that fundamentally challenged the academia's notion that each culture selectively labels certain colors in the spectrum arbitrarily, and solved the dilemma created by Geiger's discovery that there was a gradual sequence of color-labeling among different primitive cultures in an age when people had stopped judging other cultures based on the "superiority" of European culture. One of the most valuable contributions of the book is that it brought up Geiger's color sequence once again, though with a bit modification, after more than a century and under the collective intention to forget such embarrassment. This was absolutely good effort to raise the awareness of the academia that the problem it had chosen to erase was still there, waiting for an answer. 77 p90: However, Berlin and Kay's theory was not consistent with further discoveries when more experiments and languages were tested for color sensing. 77 p90: Mr. Deutscher's opinion about the debate whether nature or culture (the evidence that nature rules is that people from different cultures have largely applied the same sequence of color perception and their capabilities of distinguishing colors are almost the same; the evidence that culture might be more overwhelming is that there is no universal rule that could explain all the phenomena discovered in color perception. Some degree of cultural arbitrary cannot be ignored) is more influential in the concept formation of color: "culture enjoys freedom within constraints." 77 Human's ability to distinguish colors has never been low. From early ages, people could already tell apart different colors, yet the ability to distinguish does not equate the same need to label the different colors also differently. The labeling itself is a cultural issue, and carried out freely but within constraints. For instance, the reason why red is always the first to be labeled might be that this color has special meaning, such as danger (blood) and excitement (physical or mental arousal). Since red can be manipulated and has crucial meanings in people's daily lives, it is adopted at an early stage. The following naming of green and yellow might be due to their representation of foods (fruit, crop, etc.). Foods are also important and tangible, so these two colors are adopted quickly as well. However, for color like blue, since there is nothing meaning in a person's daily life could be linked to this color, people find it unnecessary to use a separate term to describe it. Indeed, the blue sky means nothing to them, since the sky itself is pretty much a representation of nothingness. Obviously, in this explanation, the labeling of colors depend on both the biological capabilities to distinguish color in the first place, and the cultural need to label some of them due to their significance. 77 p95: A little bit of conclusion of the story thus far. Gladstone was highly praised by Mr. Deutscher, because he thought the current understanding of color perception was not too much different from what Gladstone had proposed centuries ago. Gladstone's idea that human's ability to detect more colors could be enhanced through exercise and pass on to offspring was not correct in the Larmacian terms. Yet, if such evolution is based on culture, i.e. what is passed on is knowledge and folklores, this idea becomes very interesting. Through "practice", our ancestors realized the importance of several specific colors, and their acquired ability to name them, i.e. the labels of these colors given by the ancestors, could very well be inherited by the next generation through education. 77 p103: There is no less complex language around the world (even the most primitive culture still possesses complex language grammars). However, that does not mean that the extent of complexity of different languages is also similar. 77 p104: The saying that all languages are equally complex has never been solidly proven. It is merely something linguistics believe in, and in turn the public accept this concept wholeheartedly. 77 p108: How to measure the complexity of a language. Hmm…a very daunting question. 77 p109: It is too hilarious the following sayings: 1. To compare the complexities of two languages "is more like comparing apples and orangutans". 2. The assertion that all languages have the same amount of complexity is as meaningless as saying that "all languages are equally cornflakes." 77 p110: The size of the vocabulary in an illiterate society is much smaller than a literate one with written tradition, because the latter has "passive vocabulary", which includes many words that people can recognize that normally do not use in daily lives. 77 p113: Quite contrary to what people had expected before, it turned out that simpler societies have more complex languages than more sophisticated ones (in a sense that words in simpler societies tend to contain more information individually compared to their counterparts in more advanced societies). 77 p116: A possible reason for the phenomenon described above might be as follows: in a simple society, one only communicates with people he is familiar with. Thus, he tends to use more sophisticated words (intimate people can understand each other well even if information is more intertwined in only a few words). However, in an advanced society, the increased opportunities to communicate with strangers require that information be transmitted more clearly. In order to avoid misunderstanding, it would then be better to allow only one meaning to each word, thus creating a simpler word morphology. 77 p118: However, the scenario for the correlation between sound inventories and size of societies is quite the opposite, with small societies having fewer sounds while large ones more sounds (statistical correlation only, exceptions exit). 77 Subordination in language, finite complement in particular, might indicate higher level of society organization. But this claim does not have statistical support. 77 The erroneous claim that language could substantially influence our thought (the so called "linguistic relativity") was made by Sapir and his student Whorf. However, the idea that language might have some bearings on people's way of thinking appeared much earlier than Sapir and Whorf's time. Nevertheless, that old idea made by Humboldt in early 19th century was vague and hollow at best. He did, however, inspire many followers, including the infamous Sapir and Whorf. 77 p149: Language is not a prison-house for our thoughts. What we can perceive is NOT restricted or shaped by our mother tongues. i.e. if a person's native language does not have a future tense, that does not necessarily indicate that he has no concept of future. 77 p150: It is nevertheless possible that one cannot explain all the concepts in one culture to another due to the difference in language composition (lack of corresponding vocabularies, for example). But this does not mean that the second culture can not understand the new concepts provided by the first culture. What the second culture lacks is not the ability for comprehension, but merely the vocabulary itself. To overcome this hurdle, the second culture could simply borrow the words from the first culture or extend the meaning of its existing words to accommodate the new concepts. Yet while it is learning the new words, it has actually fully understood the novel concepts behind each word. In fact, we have witnessed many of such occasions in Europe. Just consider how many incidences of word-borrowing have occurred to English and German, then we will not be fooled by the language-prison claim. 77 p151: the Boa-Jakobson principle. 77 p151: According to Franz Boa, grammar determines all the concepts that a language must convey. This idea was further constructed by Roman Jakobson, which stated that language differed not in the concepts they could convey but in those they must convey. In other words, any language could express any thoughts, yet the methods they uses (the components that construct the thoughts) are not the same. The simplest example is that to express the meaning that I meet a male friend, we have to specifically use "male" to indicate the gender of the friend in English, whereas in German, there is no such need (Ich triffte einen Freund) because the noun "Freund", along with the indefinite particle "einen", already suggests the gender of the friend. Thus, both English and German can convey the same amount of information, yet they do this in different ways. 77 p152: Another aspect of the above-mentioned example is that in English, people are not obliged to divulge the information of a friend's gender, while in German people have to do this. In other words, English speakers are allowed to CHOOSE what to say and what not to say, but choosing not to say something obviously doesn't mean that a person has no idea of that thing. 77 p152: Based on Boa-Jacobson's principle, Mr. Deutscher thought language does have some influence on our thinking, but not in a manner of restricting us like a prison, but accustoming us to certain concepts that the language obliges us to be exposed to every time we use it. The high frequency of exposure to the obliged concepts required by the language might have subtle consequences on native speakers way of thinking. 77 p154: If anyone ever complains about the complexity of German, try to learn Matses, the language of a tribe in the tropical Amazon rain forest. 77 p161: Egocentric vs. geographic direction in Guugu Yimithirr language. 77 p189: The extensive use of cardinal directions in Guugu Yimithirr might be a cultural preference rather than a natural decree, because there is simply no reason that people there should abandon the egocentric direction all together. Other aborigines living in similar environments adopt both the cardinal and egocentric directions. Thus, the situation with Guugu Yimithirr seems very peculiar. 77 Language very likely play the most important role in forming the cardinal orientation in Guugu Yimithirr. Since children in that culture generally acquire the cardinal orientation as early as three years old, the only practice they might have experienced is through daily conve