萨丕尔-沃尔夫假说

萨丕尔－沃尔夫假设

主要内容

美国人萨丕尔及其弟子沃尔夫提出的有关语言与思维关系的假设是这个领域里至今为止最具争议的理论。

沃尔夫首先提出，所有高层次的思维都倚赖于语言。说得更明白一些，就是语言决定思维，这就是语言决定论这一强假设。由于语言在很多方面都有不同，沃尔夫还认为，使用不同语言的人对世界的感受和体验也不同，也就是说与他们的语言背景有关，这就是语言相对论。

Linguistic relativity stems from a question about the relationship between language and

thought, about whether one's language determines the way one thinks. This question has given birth to a wide array of research within a variety of different disciplines, especially anthropology, cognitive science, linguistics, and philosophy. Among the most popular and controversial theories in this area of scholarly work is the theory of

linguistic relativity (also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis). An often cited \

version\our language in some way determines the way we perceive the world. A weaker version of this claim posits that language structure influences the world view adopted by the speakers of a given language, but does not determine it.[1]

由萨丕尔－沃尔夫假设的这种强假设可以得出这样的结论：根本没有真正的翻译，学习者也不可能学会另一种文化区的语言，除非他抛弃了他自己的思维模式，并习得说目的语的本族语者的思维模式。

词和意义

人们普遍接受了这一点：语言中的词汇只是一些无意义的标签，语言使用者用它们来引起情绪上的或行为上的反应，传递信息或引导听者的注意力。词和短语的意义在很

多程度上倚赖于语境。词句的语境变了，它们的要旨和意义也随之而变。

语法结构

语言的句法系统和使用该语言的人的感知系统之间并没有萨丕尔－沃尔夫假设所声称的那种相互倚赖的关系。语言的许多语法特征都纯粹是语言结构的表层现象。

翻译

对萨丕尔－沃尔夫假设的另一批判来自于语言间可以有成功的翻译这一事实。我们可以用英语来解释如霍皮语这样的语言的概念上的独特性，这一事实可以证明翻译批判的观点。

第二语言习得

如果不同语言有不同的概念体系，那么说某种语言的人就会因为没有所需要的概念体系而无法学会另一种语言。然而，由于人们可以学会完全不同的语言，因而这些语言不应该有不同的概念体系。

语言与世界观

语言体系并不一定能影响一个人对世界的看法。一方面，说同一语言的人对世界可能有不同的看法，包括政治观点、社会观点、宗教观点、科学观点和哲学观点都可能有所不同。另一方面，说不同语言的人也有可能有相似的政治观点、社会观点、宗教观点、科学观点和哲学观点。另外，一种语言也可以描述对世界的多种不同的看法，这一点在成功的翻译作品中可以看得很清楚。 英文版

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

The American anthropologist-linguist Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Lee Whorf proposed a sweeping, two-pronged hypothesis concerning language and thought.

Whorf proposed first that all higher levels of thinking are dependent on language. Or put it more bluntly, language determines thought, hence the strong notion of linguistic determinism. Because languages differ in many ways, Whorf also believed that speakers of different languages perceive and experience the world differently, that is, relative to their linguistic background, hence the notion of linguistic relativism.

If follows from this strong version of the hypothesis that there is no real translation and that it is impossible to learn the language of a different culture unless the learner abandons his or her own mode of thinking and acquires the thought patterns of the native speakers of the target language.

Arguments against the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Words and meaning. It is widely accepted that the vocabulary of a language consists of nothing more than meaningless labels which are manipulated by language users to elicit emotional reactions or behavioral responses, to impart information or to direct the listener's attention. The meaning of a word or phrase depends largely on the communicative context. As the context of a word or sentence changes, its effect and meaning also change.

Grammatical structure. The syntactic system of a language and the perceptual system of the speakers of that language do not have the kind of interdependent relationship that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis claimed to have. Many grammatical features of a language are purely superficial aspects of linguistic structure.

Translation. Another major argument against the hypothesis comes from the fact that successful translation between languages can be made. The translation

argument is supported by the very fact that conceptual uniqueness of a language such as Hopi can nonetheless be explained in English.

Second language acquisition. If languages have different conceptual systems, then someone who speaks one language will be unable to learn the other language because he lacks the right conceptual system. However, since people can learn radically different languages, those languages couldn't have different conceptual systems.

Language and world views. The language system does not necessarily provide specifics of one's world views. On the one hand, people speaking the same language may have different world views, including political, social, religious, scientific and philosophical views. On the other hand, people speaking different languages may share similar political, social, religious, scientific or philosophical views. Moreover, one language can describe many different world views, as is evident in the case of successful translation.

萨丕尔-沃尔夫假说是上个世纪语言学上具有重大意义的理论．萨丕尔-沃尔夫假说：美国人类学家萨丕尔及其弟子沃尔夫提出的有关语言和思维的假设是最具争议的理论。萨丕尔-沃尔夫假说有两个部分：1 语言决定论，即一个人的思维完全由母语决定，因为一个人只能根据其母语中编码设定的范畴和区别定义来认识世界；2 语言相对论， 即语言结构有无限的多样性，因此一种语言系统中所编定的范畴类别和区分定义为该语言系统所独有，与其他语言系统中所编定的范畴类别和区分定义不同。

Linguistic relativity

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from Whorf-Sapir hypothesis)

The principle of linguistic relativity holds that the structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers are able to conceptualize their world, i.e. their world view. Popularly known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, the principle is generally understood as having two different versions: (i) the strong version that language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories and (ii) the weak version that linguistic categories and usage influence thought and certain kinds of non-linguistic behavior.

The idea was first clearly expressed by 19th century thinkers, such as Wilhelm von Humboldt, who saw language as the expression of the spirit of a nation. The early 20th century school of American Anthropology headed by Franz Boas and Edward Sapir also embraced the idea. Sapir's student Benjamin Lee Whorf came to be seen as the primary proponent as a result of his published observations of how he perceived linguistic differences to have consequences in human cognition and behavior. Harry Hoijer, one of Sapir's students, introduced the term \–Whorf hypothesis\[1] albeit infelicitously due to Sapir's non-involvement with the idea and the term's misleading use of hypothesis in a colloquial (i.e. non-scientific) sense.[2] Whorf's ideas were widely criticized, and Roger Brown and Eric Lenneberg decided to put them to the test. They reformulated Whorf's principle of linguistic relativity as a testable hypothesis and conducted experiments designed to find out whether color perception varies between speakers of languages that classified colors differently. As the study of the universal nature of human language and cognition came into focus in the 1960s the idea of linguistic relativity fell out of favor. A 1969 study by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay claimed to demonstrate that color terminology is subject to universal semantic constraints, and hence to discredit the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.

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