Michael; Here's an article you might find interesting: http://www.pnas.org/content/106/11/4567.full (tinyurl) http://tinyurl.com/bayflls
For a small example from my own experience, when I lived in Nfld I got introduced to the notion of a "large" day. it was a term I had never heard before, it refers to the sort of day when the air is soft and fresh, the sky is blue and clear, and the people you happen across all seem expansive and welcoming. Of course to really get a sense of the word you have to hear it expressed in a content and optimistic manner. It gave me a new category to assemble experiences, a subpartition of "nice" or "pleasant" days, and now the word comes to mind when I'm talking about the weather, particularly with those familiar with Nfld, or Cape Breton..... Anyway, off to bed... Cheers; Chris On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 11:28 PM, Michael Brady <[email protected]> wrote: > Berg's question is simplistic. > > But as it happens, I have been thinking about a related idea for a while, and > that is that we express tense--the grammatical construction of > time--differently in different languages. I don't know a second language > sufficiently well enough to analyze the same experience separately in each and > note how they are expressed differently in regards to the sequencing of time. > But I know that there is a difference. I also know that if I render a French > phrase into English, it will sound stilted until I find an idiomatic form in > English that closely approximates the French phrase. That, however, doesn't > indicate that we "perceive a somewhat different world" but that we describe > experiences differently in different languages. As I said in my earlier > message, I firmly subscribe to a unitary experience, not segregated or > disintegrated kinds of experiences. > > And Chris, my memories of learning different disciplines--math, art, drawing, > language, etc.--is not that the language of the discipline changed or gave me > insights, just a more precise linguistic way to describe the experience of the > discipline. The discipline itself, such as trying to master the calculus of > infinitesimals or some biological or physical study, gave me the insights *and > the language to represent them to myself*. > > > > | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | > Michael Brady
