[Heartlogic-dev] whorf report / developmental psychology

[Joshua N Pritikin]

D. Gentner and S. Goldin-Meadow (Eds.), Advances in the Investigation of
Language and Thought.

The chapters of this volume can be classified into two types:

One type is concerned with trying to detect how different languages (eg.
English vs Japanese vs Korean) influence non-linguist cognition.  Some
of the potential effects investigated include descriptions of spacial
relationships and sex indication on inanimate nouns.  I did not find
these chapters particularly interesting.

The other type of chapter is concerned with language vs a lack of
language.  A position paper by Tomasello framed this type of study.
After discovering what Tomasello is doing, I am eager to get a copy of
his recent book "Constructing a Language : A Usage-Based Theory of
Language Acquisition" (ISBN 0674017641)

Besides Tomasello, I enjoyed the chapter by Elizabeth Spelke:

Spelke, E.S. (2003). What makes humans smart? In D. Gentner and S.
Goldin-Meadow (Eds.), Advances in the Investigation of Language and
Thought. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (available online)

Here is a brief summary:

Generally speaking, Spelke is interested in trying to understand what
makes humans different from other animals.  Her initial hypothesis is
that humans possess a core knowledge system(s) which is somehow superior
to animals.  She mentioned inborn subsystems such as a basic geometric
sense and numerical approximation.  However, all of the inborn
subsystems identified so far are also present in animals.

Hence, Spelke decided that what makes humans unique is sophisticated
language.  Furthermore, one important role of language is to serve as a
representational medium between core subsystems.  This opens up an
interesting direction of investigation.

"Perhaps the most remarkable property of nature language is its
compositionality: once a speaker knows the meanings of a set of words
and the rules for combining those words together, she can represent the
meanings of new combinations of those words the very first time that she
hears them.  The compositionality of natural languages explains how it
is possible for people to understand what they hear or read, when
virtually every sentence they encounter is new to them. Once a speaker
knows the syntactic rules of her native language and the meanings of a
set of terms, she will understand the meanings of any well-formed
expressions using those terms the first time that she hears them, and
she will be able to produce new expressions appropriately with any
further learning." pp 295-6

Does the ability to combine information from core subsystems develop in
step with the acquisition of corresponding words?  Spelke finds a
correlation, at least in the progression of the ability to compare
numerical quantities.

Broadly speaking, this stuff seems relevant to grounding cognitive
appraisal theory with developmental psychology.

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