IS LINGUISTIC DETERMINISM an EMPIRICALLY TESTABLE Hyp01l{F.5IS?

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IS LINGUISTIC DETERMINISM AN EMPIRICALLY TESTABLE HYP01l{f.5IS?

HELEN DE CRUZ

I. Lm,uurit:lkterminism

Intuitively, language seems 10 be an important and necessary part of our everyday thinking. SNdics reporting introspective awa.renes$ indicarethat people experience IS much as 50% of their Ihoughts in 'inner speech' (Hurl- butt, 1990). Lanauage might shape cognitive processes by providing IU wilh I strocrured medium to coocepru.alize the ...."OIld, giving humans a degree of cognitive lIexibility 001 found iDOIheranimals. This ide3.goes back at least lODesc:attes·Mldirationsanditappearsinthe ...."OIl;:ofse,-en.lCOIIte:mpo- rary philosophers of mind (e.g., Carruthers, 20(3). If language detc:rmines or at the very least innuences cognition. we e:qleCt speali::en of different languages 10 have divergenlconceprua.liz.a.tioDliofthe .....orld-asthelinguis! WhOIf(19j6. p. 213) pul it 'We diuect nature along lines laid out by our nativclanguage'. The claims thai language sbapes the way we see the world, and thai 8$' reSUlt, speaken of different languages conceptualize reality differently will here be referred 10 ulingllink dererminum. Linguistic determinism comes both in sltOng vmions(i.e., languagedelenuines thought cntmo,ly) and in wealcer forms (i.e., language influellces cognition 10 an important extent). It bua:enerated a subsuntill bodyofresean:h over the past half century. though many cognitive 5cientists (e.g., Bloom, 2000) remaio skeptical and think that lanpageonly serves a purcly communicative function. According to them, its role in cognition is restricted rotbeatquisitionofinfotmation: Ollcetheinformationisacquired.cognitivepfQCe~sesaredecidedlynonlin- guistic.ThiaviewisbackeduphySludiesthatindicalehigh.levelcognition in the absence oflangUl.ge: prelingwstic infants and non-human an.ima.ls can make high-level categorizations. infer the intentions ofOlhers based 00 their actions, and perfonn rudimentary arithmetical oper11tions (e.g .. Fabre- Thorpe, Richard,&Tborpe, 1998). DevittandSterelny(I999,p.224}con- cur with this view: '[nhe argument fo( an imponant lingui~tic rdativit)· evaporate:s under lCTUUny. 'The only respect m which language clearly and obviously does inlluence thought turns out to he rather banal: language pro - AltcrnativeJy, children could rely mainiy on non-linguistic cues to learn the vides us with most of our concepts'. meanings of words, such as gestures orpointing, as Bloom (2000) suggested. The received view on linguistic dete:nninism has repeatedly swayed from How can we empirically decide which account is correct? Unfortunate:ly, we one extreme to the other, from strong versions of universalism (i.e., language cannot take linpistic difference,~ in denoting concepts as prima facie evi- does not inlluence cognitive preo::essesj to strong venioll.'l of linguistic deter- dence for cognitive differences in speakers of those languages. as this would minism. This indecision may point to prohlems with linguistic determinism amount to circular reasoning. For example, unlike English, Japanes.c does as an empirically test.ahle bypothNis. Some problems can be situated on a no( make a grammatical distinction between count noom (e.g., cat, house, concepruallevcl. It remaiDli unclear, for example, what counts as decisive guitl\f) lind mass nouns (e.g .. gold, bread. wate:r): in English, only mass evidence in favor of linguistic determinism. Whereas Devin and Sterelny nouns arecounte:d by addingclar.sificrs, as in 'five cups of water', Whereas (I999j think that it is ratherhanal that language provides us with most con- in Japanese all words are counted withelassificrs (c.g., 'fiveanimalsofcal'). cepts, other authors IICcord a privileged position to concepts in buman oog- Yet, Japanese toddlers perform as well as their English-speaking peen in nition. Indeed. Prinz (2002, p. I). in his introduction to Fumi.:shing the mind visual discrimination tasks between countahle ohjects and mass-like sub- goes as far as to say that 'Withoutconccpts, there WQUld be no thoughts. stances(lmai & Gentner, 1997). The fact that lapanese does nOldistinguish Concepts are the basic timbcr of our menul lives.' If this view of concepts between mass and count nouns does not mean that !peakers of Japanese do is correct, then Devitt and Stcrelny (1999) would acruaUy he malr;ing a very not make a conceptual distinction between countable and uncount.ahle oh- strong claim for linguistic detenninism. Inresponsetothisprohlem,narnely jects. that linguistic determinism makes very broad claims that are difficult to test Developmental psychologists study relationships between de~elopmental empirically, some aulhors have proposed to focus on specific domains of changesinlanguageacquisitionandchangNinconceptualknowledge.Ac- conceptual cognition such as number words (e.g., Frank, Everett, Pedorenko, cordingtothem,agivenconceptcis linguistically detcnuinedjust in case its & Gibson, 2008a) and spatial cognition (e.g., Henner-Vazquez. Moffet, & developmenl coincides with relevant cbanges in language development. An Munkholm, 2(01). In this paper, I will argue that even in these controlled e"ampleofthisapproachisXuandCarey's(I996)duckandtruckexperi- studiN,itremainsdifficultto assess the infiuence of language on cogni- menl, which probes the development ofsorta1 CODCepts. In the philosophical tion.lwi1lfocusondevclopmenlalpsychologyandoomparativelinguistics, literature ever since Locke (1689), the term sonal has come to denote: 11con- as within these disciplines linguistic determinism is frequently sUbjecte:dto cept that providN criteria for individuation and identity. For example, 'how empirical tests. I will point out that it remains very difficult ro tease apart many red chairs are there in tbe room?' is a meaningful question that yields linguistic and non-linguistic factors in both fields of enquiry. Thus linguistic adefiniteanswerb«ause'chair'isasortalconceptthatrefer&toaspecific determinism remains hard ro te:st empirically. categoryofcountableohjects. Inconlrast,wecannotask 'how many red isthereintheroom',as this could refer to red objects, but also ro parts of these and/or otherohjccts. Xu and Carey (1996) investigated the role of 2, Deve1cpmemalpsychalogy noun comprehension in the development of sorta1 concepls. Inthcircxper- iment. infants were shown 11screen from which two dis~irnilar looking toys As Quine (1960) already pointed out, it is computationally impossihle to (a yellow duck and a red uud:) emerged. First, the duck appears from the consider alllogical\y possible meanings when learning the referent of a new left of the screcn and gocs back behind it, and then the truckcomc:s into word,sincetherearemanyobjectsandpartsofohjectsinthecnvironment view from the right side of the screen and returns behindi!. The screen is in which a word is uttered (e.g., a speake! using the word 'rahbit' could re- subsequently lowered to reveal either one or twO items. Ifinfllnts are able fer to any ohject in the vicinily, or even to a part of the rabbit rather than to to discriminate:bc:tween the objccts, i.e., if they have two distinct sortal con- thc animal in its entirety). Ycl, young children are fa!1 and dficient word cepts corresponding to DUCK and TRUCK, they should e"pect to see lWO learners. Quine conjecrured that children narrow down the range o[ possihle obje.:ts and be surprised {indicated hy a longer looking time) ro find onl)' candidates by using grammatical cues. In the case of 'rabhit',theycan 110- one ohjecl Ten-month-old infants pecfonn poorly in this task: they look tice that it is a count noun (this is indicated by theplaceofthe .....ord in the equally long wben seeing one or two objccts. lncontrast, most l2-month- syntactic structure, and the use of an article), soitwillprobablyrefcrtoa olds look significantly longe:r when only one object is present, indicating that countahle ohject in its entirety. This claim is in agreement with linguistic de- they can see the difference between both toys. Xu (2002) argues thaI this determinism, which lIMumes that language shapes the way we parse the world. velopmentalchang~ lies in languagcacquisition: at 12 months, but not at 10 months, m()S(infants can rec;:ogniu and U$e nouns. AS.lIOUnsprovideuJ Another case for linguistic determinism from the perspective of develop- with a COIIvenient way ro ca.regoriu objecu, dUs Iingujsuc capacity might mental psycboloiY is the emergence of flexihle search Strllegies. HumlUts ell.lbJe infants 10 dUcrimiDate better between di1ferent kinds of objects. An u.sea varietyofclIe$ 10 Iindtheirway,lllJddUscapacilyiJoften aUribo.lled alternative, non-linguistic explanation is that 12-month-olds succeed in !be (e.g.. Haun, Ca1l,lanzen, & L.evilUOn. 2006) to language. Cheng (1986) ob· teSt due to an improved ability for Ita/lire plDring. This iJ the capacity to SCl'-ed thatntts rely purely 011 geometric cucs when they bave to lind back distifliUish features without predicating them 10 objecu (StraW$OIl, 1963). tile location of a food-item. He let hungry rats explore a room with partially In this ease. !be older infants could simply hl.ve expected to see yellowness buried hits of food. After the food was fully buried, they were reintroduced. (the duck) and redness (the truck) and be surprised to find only yellowneu Althougb the animals were provided with a wealth of nongeomctric infor- or redtlCSl. HoYiever, dUs alternative explanation seems duhious, because mation (here termed leall/ral cues). such as distinctive odors and relative Other experimental sb.ldies.\bow that infants have access ro!rind information brightness of the walls. they apparenlly relied on one clue only, theshapc before they pay attc:ntion tofeamres. Indeed,infantsmdyoungChilMn of the room. The nts betrayed. their search methods by looking with bigh nperiencedifficultieswithcolorcatc:s:oriZlltion,ieading 12-month-okb,for mquency for the food al its true location as well as its geometric equiYalent: example, 10 notice when abotlleis swilchedfora cup, bulDOl to IIOticethat • mistake termed lhe rotational error. For CAamplc, they would lICarch ill the Ibluecup is switched fOf. red one (L.eslie, Xu, TremouleC,&Scboll,I998). tv."O corners that are located to the left of the ~bort walb, which are geomet- TItis strengthCD.$ the inte:rpretation of the evidcnce as an emerging abililY to ricallyindistinguishable, as sbO\\"O in Fig. I. In a series of replications of (onn$Ortal concepts with the aid of language. In support of her conclusion, this experiment, Henner and Spelke (1994) fOlllld that two--year-olds make Xu (2002) mentions thaI the success in 12-month-olds iJ strongly correlated the same rotational error. After baving witnessed bow attractive toys wc:rc 10 vocabulary: if an infant knew whal the words 'ducl;:' and 'truck' meant, hidden in a room, the toddlers were disorieDled and reinllOduced: theyreli- she had a higher cbance of succeeding in the wk. In a replication of the ex- ahly looked as of len in the gcomctrically appropriate comers as in the true periment, 100month-olds were givenexplicic linguistic cues (such as 'look, locatiollS.Likelherats.theywereuttcrlyunahlerooricntthemselvesbyuse ii's a truck',or 'look, that"s a duck'). Infants who had failed the experiment ofnongeomctric (featural) cues, sucb BS the color of a wall. previouslysucccededwhentheyroceivedtheselinpisticcues. Althougb these additional experiments provide corroborative evidence, they do not unequivocally pro,-e that language lics u the basis of our ability to form $OrtaI ooncepu. In a replication of Xu and Carey's (1996) experi. goal 0 ment, with an orange CiUTOI: and yellow squasb U!led as stimuli. free-ranging rhesus monkeys did as well as 12-month-okb de

we can see that it also works well without invoking {he tlllrd step, limited From the cases presented here, we cannot decide whether language is nec- numerical vocabulary. essary for the development ofsol1al concepu, spatial searching strategies Further doubt on the Whorfian interpretation of the Amazonian data is or narural number concepts. This mighl point to a fundamental problem cast by a series of experiments (ButtClWorth & Reeve, 20(8) that probe nu- withlinguisticdcterminismasasc.ientificallyte:stablehypolhesis.Empirical merical cognition in Australian Aboriginal children from cultures with few tests for linguistic detemtinism require clear distinctions becween concep- counting words. These children performed te:S!B similar to those in Gordon tual (nonlioguistic) knowledge andnonconceptual linguistic skills. But it is nol always dear how these distinctions can be drawn. Linguistic expressions have a semanticconte:nt. and it is difficult to assess to what extem this can ex - Carey, S. (2(04). Bootstrapping and the origin of concepts. Daeda!us, 133, istindepend~ntlyfromlanguage.Someauthors(e.g.,Man::us,2006,p.454) ,"-'. arguethatlanguagedrawsuponpbylogeneticallyoldersystelll!Jofconcep- Carruthers,P. (2003). Modularity, language, and the Hexihilityoflhought. tualrepresenlation: 'language does indeed borrow [ ... 1 cognitive machinery Behavioral and Brai" Sciences, 25,705-119. inherited from our non-speaking primate ancestors'. This view is supported Cheng, K. (1986). A purely geometric module in the ral'~ spatial representa- hy the observation that nonhuman animals can make high-level conceptual tion. Cognition,23,149-17B. distinctions: rhesu5monkeys even outperfonn humans in accuracy and speed Cordes, S., Gelman. R., & Gallistel, C. (2001). Variability signatures distin- when categorizing pictures into food and nonfood items (Fabre-Thorpe et guish verbal from nonverhal counting for both large and small numbers. al.,1998).Althoughcasesofpeoplewithintactcognitionandimpairedlan- PsychonomicBulltlin&'Revi(:W,B,698-707. guageor vice versa do exist, there is usually a connection between them: Decock, L (2008). The conceptual basis of numerical abilities: One-to-one impairments in linguistic skills are often coupled wilh impairments in one correspondence versus the successor relation. Philosophical Psycho!· or more conceptual domains. Take patients with brain damage in the occip- ogy,21,459-413. il3llobe, who lose their ability to name animals and plants and to remem- De Cruz, H. (2CXl9). An enhanced argument for innate elemenlary geometric bersemantic facts about Ihem. They answer. for instance, at chance level knowledge and its philosophical implications. In B. Van Kerkhove (Ed.), to questions like 'do whales have feet?' 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