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Language in Mind : Advances in the Study of Language and Thought Language in Mind This page intentionally left blank Language in Mind Advances in the Study of Language and Thought edited by Dedre Gentner and Susan Goldin-Meadow A Bradford Book The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England ( 2003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or informa- tion storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in Sabon on 3B2 by Asco Typesetters, Hong Kong. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Language in mind ; advances in the study of language and thought / edited by Dedre Gentner and S. Goldin-Meadow. p. cm. ‘‘A Bradford book.’’ Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-262-07243-2 (hc. : alk. paper)—ISBN 0-262-57163-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Psycholinguistics. 2. Cognition. I. Gentner, Dedre. II. Goldin, Susan. P37 .L357 2003 4010.9—dc21 2002029578 Contents Contributors vii Acknowledgments ix I Introduction 1 Whither Whorf 3 Dedre Gentner and Susan Goldin-Meadow II Position Statements 15 1 Languages and Representations 17 Eve V. Clark 2 Language and Mind: Let’s Get the Issues Straight! 25 Stephen C. Levinson 3 The Key Is Social Cognition 47 Michael Tomasello III Language as Lens: Does the Language We Acquire Influence How We See the World? 59 4 Sex, Syntax, and Semantics 61 Lera Boroditsky, Lauren A. Schmidt, and Webb Phillips 5 Speaking versus Thinking about Objects and Actions 81 Barbara C. Malt, Steven A. Sloman, and Silvia P. Gennari 6 The Effects of Spatial Language on Spatial Representation: Setting Some Boundaries 113 Edward Munnich and Barbara Landau 7 Language and Thought Online: Cognitive Consequences of Linguistic Relativity 157 Dan I. Slobin vi Contents IV Language as Tool Kit: Does the Language We Acquire Augment Our Capacity for Higher-Order Representation and Reasoning? 193 8 Why We’re So Smart 195 Dedre Gentner 9 Does Language Help Animals Think? 237 Stan A. Kuczaj, II, and Jennifer L. Hendry 10 What Makes Us Smart? Core Knowledge and Natural Language 277 Elizabeth S. Spelke 11 Conceptual and Linguistic Factors in Inductive Projection: How Do Young Children Recognize Commonalities between Animals and Plants? 313 Kayoko Inagaki and Giyoo Hatano 12 Language for Thought: Coming to Understand False Beliefs 335 Jill G. de Villiers and Peter A. de Villiers V Language as Category Maker: Does the Language We Acquire Influence Where We Make Our Category Distinctions? 385 13 Space under Construction: Language-Specific Spatial Categorization in First Language Acquisition 387 Melissa Bowerman and Soonja Choi 14 Reevaluating Linguistic Relativity: Language-Specific Categories and the Role of Universal Ontological Knowledge in the Construal of Individuation 429 Mutsumi Imai and Reiko Mazuka 15 Interaction of Language Type and Referent Type in the Development of Nonverbal Classification Preferences 465 John A. Lucy and Suzanne Gaskins 16 Thought before Language: Do We Think Ergative? 493 Susan Goldin-Meadow Index 523 Contributors Lera Boroditsky Susan Goldin-Meadow Department of Brain and Cognitive Department of Psychology Sciences University of Chicago Massachusetts Institute of Technology Giyoo Hatano Melissa Bowerman Human Development and Education Max Planck Institute for Program Psycholinguistics University of the Air Soonja Choi Jennifer L. Hendry Department of Linguistics and Department of Psychology Oriental Languages University of Southern Mississippi San Diego State University Mutsumi Imai Eve V. Clark Faculty of Environmental Information Department of Linguistics Keio University Stanford University Kayoko Inagaki Jill G. de Villiers Faculty of Education Department of Psychology Chiba University Smith College Stan A. Kuczaj, II Peter A. de Villiers Department of Psychology Department of Psychology University of Southern Mississippi Smith College Barbara Landau Suzanne Gaskins Department of Cognitive Science Department of Psychology Johns Hopkins University Northeastern Illinois University Stephen C. Levinson Silvia P. Gennari Max Planck Institute for Department of Linguistics Psycholinguistics University of Maryland John A. Lucy Dedre Gentner Department of Psychology Department of Psychology University of Chicago Northwestern University viii Contributors Barbara C. Malt Department of Psychology Lehigh University Reiko Mazuka Department of Psychology Duke University Edward Munnich School of Education University of California, Berkeley Webb Phillips Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lauren A. Schmidt Stanford University Dan I. Slobin Department of Psychology University of California, Berkeley Steven A. Sloman Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences Brown University Elizabeth S. Spelke Department of Psychology Harvard University Michael Tomasello Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Acknowledgments This book is the culmination of the efforts of many people. We are par- ticularly grateful for the early and generous support of the MIT Press, which made the book possible. Our job as editors was greatly aided by the excellent work of our copy editor, Anne Mark, and by Thomas Stone, Sandra Minkkinen, and the rest of the staff at the MIT Press. The original impetus for this book was a workshop on language and thought sponsored by the Cognitive Science Program at Northwestern University in spring 1998 at which the editors and many of the authors were present. The ideas that emerged during the workshop made it clear that a new movement was building. Many of these ideas have been in- corporated into this book. We thank Northwestern University for its support of the Cognitive Science workshop program. Dedre Gentner’s work on this book was supported in part by a sabbatical fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, through a grant from the William T. Grant Foundation, award number 95167795. Her research related to the book was supported by NSF award number 21001/ REC-0087516 and by NSF award number SBR-9720313/5-27481. Susan Goldin-Meadow’s work on the book was supported in part by a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the James McKeen Cattell Fund. Her research related to the book was supported by NIH grant number R01 DC00491. Finally, we thank Michelle Osmondson of Northwestern University for her help in editing, and Kathleen Braun of Northwestern University for masterminding the entire process of assembling the book. This page intentionally left blank I Introduction This page intentionally left blank Whither Whorf Dedre Gentner and Susan Goldin-Meadow For the last two decades, the hypothesis that language can influence thought—generally known as the Whorfian hypothesis—has been in serious disrepute. Admitting any sympathy for, or even curiosity about, this possibility was tantamount to declaring oneself to be either a sim- pleton or a lunatic. The view of most language researchers is well ex- pressed by Pinker (1994, 65): ‘‘Most of the experiments have tested banal ‘weak’ versions of the Whorfian hypothesis, namely that words can have some effect on memory or categorization. Some of these ex- periments have actually worked, but that is hardly surprising.’’ Devitt and Sterelny (1987, 178) express this skepticismeven morestrongly: ‘‘[T]he argument for an important linguistic relativity evaporates under scrutiny. The only respect in which language clearly and obviously does influence thought turns out to be rather banal: language provides us with most of our concepts.’’ The latter quotation exemplifies the rather schizophrenic way in which the Whorfian question has been viewed. The language-and-thought question is dismissed as banal and unimportant, yet in the same breath it is stated (almost in passing) that language pro- vides us with most of our concepts—a view far stronger than that of even the most pro-Whorf researchers. Whorf was not the first to express the idea that language influences thought. For example, Humboldt (1836) viewed language as the forma- tive organ of thought and held that thought and language are insepara- ble (see Gumperz and Levinson 1996a; Lucy 1996, for reviews). Whorf’s own views were somewhat more subtle than is generally realized. Along with his well-known strong conjecture: 4 Gentner and Goldin-Meadow We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. The categories and types that we isolate fromthe world of phenomenawe do not find there be- cause they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is pre- sented in a kaleidoscope flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds—and this means largely by the linguistic systems of our minds. (1956, 213) he also considered weaker views: My own studies suggest, to me, that language, for all its kingly role, is in some sense a superficial embroidery upon deeper processes of consciousness, which are necessary before any communication, signaling, or symbolism whatsoever can occur . (1956, 239) Nonetheless, the hypothesis that has come to be known as the Whorfian hypothesis, or alternatively the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, states that (1) languages vary in their semantic partitioning of the world; (2) the struc- ture of one’s language influences the manner in which one perceives and understands the world; (3) therefore, speakers of different languages will perceive the world differently. Why would anyone ever come
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