Ch. 8.3 - Language and Thought

Q: What is the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis?

A: The idea that language influences how we experience and perceive the world.

Q: What is categorical perception in linguistic relativity?

A: Faster and more accurate discrimination of stimuli that cross a linguistic category boundary.

Q: How do English speakers perform on blue–green colour tasks compared to speakers of languages that merge these colours?

A: English speakers perform better when colours straddle the blue–green boundary; speakers of languages that merge them perform equally on both tasks.

Q: What is the Universalist view of language and thought?

A: The belief that humans share a common repertoire of thought and perception that shapes all languages.

Q: How do languages guide cognition in the Universalist view?

A: Languages guide attention, and attention shapes cognition.

Q: How do languages evolve according to the Universalist view?

A: They evolve along predictable lines.

Q: What is the relationship between human thought and language in the Universalist view?

A: Human thought is universal, and languages express these universal aspects.

Q: How many basic colour terms do the simplest languages have?

A: Two: white and black.

Q: What are the three colour terms in languages with three basic colour labels?

A: White, black, and red.

Q: In four-term colour languages, which colour is added?

A: Yellow or green.