Do the languages we speak influence the way we think? Scientist has
fiercely debated this question for more than a century. A new study
bolsters the case against language`s influence by showing that people
with different native tongues organize events in the same order-even if
that order is different from the one dictated by their native grammar.
Psychologist Susan Goldin-Meadow of the University of Chicago asked
Chinese, English, Spanish and Turkish speakers to describe activities by
using only their hands. Turkish is the only `language in the quartet
that follow subject, object ("woman twists knob). When gesturing,
however, all participants use` the SOV order, regardless of their native
language. The same was true in which volunteers had to put pictures in
order.
The results point to the existence of a "natural order" that
humans use when representing events nonverbally, the researchers say.
Where such a natural order might come from is unknown, but
Golding-Meadow suggest that it may influence developing languages so
that they initially use the SOV order such is the case with a sign
languages currently emerging in Israel. Languages are subject to other
pressures, however, such as the need to be semantically clear and
rhetorically interesting. As a language becomes more complex, she
explains, these pressures might push it away from the natural SOV order.
Today the two dominant orders that were represented in this study are
equally frequent and account for roughly 90 percent of the world's
languages.
One of the possible consequences of a language that goes against our
pattern of representation may be that the brain has to do additional
work when speaking it, Golding-Meadow says, "It could be that there
is a small cognitive cost to speaking English."
Happy Learning,
Yovan P. Putra
www.primastudy.com <http://www.primastudy.com>
