concepts; categorization; space; number Possessing a language is one of the central features that distinguishes humans from other species. Many people share the intuition that they think “in ” language, hence that the absence of language would, ipso facto, be the absence of thought. One compelling version of this self-reflection is Helen Keller’s (1955) report that her recognition of the signed symbol for ‘water’ triggered thought processes which had theretofore-- and consequently-- been utterly absent. Statements to the same or related effect come from the most diverse intellectual sources: “The limits of my language are the limits of my world ” (Wittgenstein, 1922]; and “The fact of the matter is that the 'real world ' is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group” (Sapir, 1941, as cited in Whorf, 1956, p. 75). * We thank Jerry Fodor for a discussion of the semantics of raining, Ray Jackendoff for a discussion of phonology, as well as Dan Slobin and Dedre Gentner for their comments on this chapter. Much of our perspective derives from our collaborative work with

Recent research has questioned the universal basis of color categorization and has instead emphasized cross-linguistic variation in boundaries of color categories. We propose that these cross-linguistically varying boundaries can be predicted from near-universal focal colors within the categories. In support of this proposal, we show that: (1) best example choices for color terms in 110 unwritten languages cluster near the prototypes for English white, black, red, green, yellow, and blue – we take these 6 points in color space to approximate universal foci; (2) best example choices cluster more tightly across languages than do category centroids; and (3) a computational model can predict color term boundaries from labelings of best examples reasonably well, for several languages, including one that has been taken to counterexemplify universal tendencies in color naming. Overview It has long been held that there are universal tendencies in color naming, in that linguistic color categories are organized around universally-shared focal points, or prototypes, in color space. Berlin and Kay (1969; B&K for short) showed that the best examples of color terms across a sample of 20 languages seemed to cluster in color space. That study and subsequent work (Kay & McDaniel, 1978; Kay & Maffi, 1999) showed that the most reliable and widespread of these clusters correspond to the six Hering primaries: white, black, red, green, yellow, and blue – suggesting that these points in color space may constitute a universal foundation for color naming. These foci in color space have also appeared to be cognitively privileged, in non-linguistic tasks with speakers of languages that have

This thesis investigates language acquisition and evolution, using the methodologies of Bayesian inference and expression-induction modelling, making specific reference to colour term typology, and syntactic acquisition. In order to test Berlin and Kay's (1969) hypothesis that the typological patterns observed in basic colour term systems are produced by a process of cultural evolution under the influence of universal aspects of human neurophysiology, an expression-induction model was created. Ten artificial people were simulated, each of which was a computational agent. These people could learn colour term denotations by generalizing from examples using Bayesian inference, and the resulting denotations had the prototype properties characteristic of basic colour terms.

It has been suggested that when we use a foreign language, we are not just speaking differently but also thinking differently. This suggestion is examined in the context of spatial deictic expression in two closely related languages, English and Spanish. Three pictures were presented representing objects in spatial relationships which could be interpreted in at least two different ways, i.e., deictically (in terms of the observer) or intrinsically (in terms of the object). Spanish and English native speakers were employed as subjects. They were each further subdivided into three groups: native language (answering in the native language), elementary (in the second language- Spanish for the English speakers and English for the Spanish native speakers), and advanced (again, in the second language). It was found that the Spanish and English subjects when replying in their native tongues displayed different ways of expressing spatial relationships. Furthermore, as the subject acquired the second language, the pattern of response approached that of the second language. Does this trend then support the Whorfian Hypothesis? The results are discussed in terms of a universal "mentalese " underlying all language, but it is suggested that particular languages have preferred patterns of expression which are acquired when one masters that language.

A strong version of the Whorfian hypothesis is that the influence of language on thought is obligatory or at least habitual; that is, thought is always, or under most circumstances, guided by language. We argue, in contrast, that at the lexical level, language and thought need not closely or commonly mirror each other. Naming -- of objects, events, or other entities -- is a communicative process that is sensitive to pressures such as a language's history and the particular history of speaker and addressee. These influences are not relevant to a non-linguistic conceptual system and to the various processes that may draw on it. We suggest that, as a result, the categories defined by the names given to entities and those defined by purely conceptual clusters may diverge. We present results indicating that linguistic categories (sets of objects called by the same name) are not isomorphic to groupings emerging from a conceptual task for artifacts in the domain of containers. We found that the linguistic categories for 60 common containers varied across speakers of English, Spanish, and Chinese. In contrast, the ways that speakers clustered the objects by similarity were substantially the same. We also present results indicating that verbs of motion show a similar pattern when encoding of actions is non-linguistic. Speakers of English and Spanish showed the same pattern of similarity judgments and confusions in memory for previously viewed action clips despite different naming patterns in their languages. We did find a linguistic effect in the similarity task after verbal encoding, an effect that conformed to language-specific patterns. Results from these two studies, along with consideration of the nature of naming and non-linguistic conceptual tasks, suggest that (1) all do...

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For more than a century, most psychologists have based their discussions of human thinking on the cardinal assumption that basic cognitive processes are the same for all normal adult human beings, whether in the plains of Central Asia, the villages of East Africa, or the

This paper examines possible influences of language on thought in the domain of spatial reasoning. Language communities differ in their stock of reference frames (coordinate systems to reference locations and directions). English typically uses egocentrically-defined axes (“leftright”). Other languages like Tseltal lack such a system but use geocentrically-defined axes ("north-south"). We ask whether the lexical resources available in one’s language determine the availability or salience of certain spatial concepts. Does a “left-right ” lexical gap translate to a conceptual gap? In three experiments, we compared Tseltal speakers ’ ability to solve spatial problems requiring an egocentric frame of reference to ones requiring a geocentric frame of reference. We found that Tseltal speakers were above chance in solving the egocentric problems, demonstrating that a lexical gap does not necessarily lead to a conceptual gap. Furthermore, participants were statistically better on the egocentric version in two of the three experiments. These results speak against some current versions of linguistic relativity.

Santiz and family, CELALI and the Casa de Cultura, Tenejapa, Chiapas. This research

Humans are unique among animals for both the diverse complexity of our cognition and our reliance on culture, the socially-transmitted representations and practices that shape experience and behavior. Adopting an evolutionary psychological approach, in this essay we consider four different facets of the relationship between cognition and culture. We begin with a discussion of two well-established research traditions, the investigation of features of mind that are universal despite cultural diversity, and the examination of features of mind that vary across cultures. We then turn to two topics that have only recently begun to receive attention, the cognitive mechanisms that underlie the acquisition of cultural information, and the effects of features of cognition on culture. Throughout, our goal is not to provide comprehensive reviews so much as to frame these issues in such a way as to spur further research.