Week 1 - Carroll Flashcards
What is the Whorf/Whorf-Sapir hypothesis?
The notion that language shapes thought patterns
Which 2 concepts are included in the Whorf hypothesis?
linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity
define linguistic determinism
the notion that a language determines certain nonlinguistic cognitive processes
define linguistic relativity
cognitive processes are different for different languages
What is differentation in a language’s lexicon?
A more highly differentiated domain
has more words
In which domains can we assess the whorfian hypothesis?
At the grammatical and the lexical levels
what does the strong version of the linguistic determinism hypothesis state?
language determines cognition: the presence of linguistic categories creates cognitive categories
what does the weak version of the linguistic determinism hypothesis state?
the presence of linguistic categories influences the ease with which various cognitive operations are performed
What is codability and how does it relate to Zipf’s law?
the length of a verbal expression - the more frequently a word is used in a language, the shorter the word
what are basic colour terms?
terms that consist of only one morpheme, are not contained within another colour, and are not restricted to a small number of objects (e.g., blonde describes hair only)
what are focal colours?
the most representative example of various basic colours
Research in the colour domain assessed the linguistic relativity hypothesis. Which version of the hypothesis did this research support?
the weak version - there are universal constraints on colour categories, but linguistic differences within those constraints affect colour cognition and perception
How does language influence numerical thought?
the way that languages represent
numbers influences mathematical thinking
What aspect of a language influences the timing of certain cognitive achievements in children?
the prevalence of nouns and verbs
What is the interactionist view in terms of cognition and language?
Children’s early word meanings result from the interaction of existing cognitive development and the semantic categories of the language
children have a rich knowledge of space prior to learning specific spatial terms in their native language. How does language then influence how children conceptualise the world?
semantic categories exist prior to language experience and are then enhanced or diminished by language acquisition
What are absolute spatial terms?
the location of an object in space irrespective of the location of a person (e.g. north)
What do relative spatial terms indicate?
the relationship between a person and an object in space (e.g. to her right)
What are intrinsic spatial terms?
they refer to objects in relation to various object coordinates (e.g. behind the house)
What is the following sentence an example of?
“If they had started earlier, they wouldn’t be late to the concert”
counterfactual reasoning - the ability to reason about an event that is contrary to fact
What was Bloom’s (1984) thesis regarding Chinese and English speakers’ ability to use counterfactual reasoning?
both populations can do it, but English speakers would reason counterfactually more easily
Languages with a grammatical gender system have a(n) ____ over other languages in the acquisition of gender identity
advantage
Distinction of objects and substances is a ____ ability
prelinguistic/possibly innate
