Linguistic Relativity Sapir/Whorf Hypothesis: The structure of our

language shapes the way we think and perceive the world. Whorf
claimed (among other things) that, due to their language, the speakers
of Hopi experience 0me in a very different way than speakers of
European languages.

Link between language and culture

Its certainly true that a language is a rich store of culture and

knowledge, which is lost or inaccessible when the language is no longer
spoken. literature (stories, novels, poetry) history knowledge
about the environment (animals, plants, etc.) humour

Its also true that languages have their own unique way of expressing
things that are often impossible to translate in other languages Dutch:
gezellig cosy

Potential links between language and culture in:

vocabulary

categorization

grammar

Vocabulary
According to Martin (1986), the Inuit of West Greenland have only two
basic words for snow (qanik, snowin the air, and aput, snow on the
ground). From these two basic elements, they are able to create a large
number of common expressions for different snow-related phenomena.
Yet, there seems to be no compelling reason to suppose that those
expressions are controlling vision or thought among their users. Some
expressions will occur frequently in the context of habitual experiences,
but it is the human who is thinking about the experience and determining
what will be expressed, not the language.

The Eskimo-Aleut languages are agglutinative languages,

meaning that they construct complex words out of smaller
units. Geoff Pullum argued that the fact that number of word roots
for snow is similar in Eskimoan languages and English proves
that there exists Languages in the Inuit and Yupik language
groups add suffixes to words to express the same concepts
expressed in English and many other languages by means of
compound words, phrases, and even entire sentences. One can
create a practically unlimited number of new words in the
Eskimoan languages on any topic, not just snow, and these same
concepts can be expressed in other languages using
combinations of words. In general and especially in this case, it is
not necessarily meaningful to compare the number of words
between languages that create words in different ways due to
different grammatical structures no difference in the breadth of
their respective vocabularies to define snow.

Gender / Noun Classes

Grammatical gender is the distinction between masculine and

feminine, which is used to classify nouns in languages such as Spanish
(el sol, la luna). A third use is for social gender, which is the distinction
we make when we use words like man and woman to classify
individuals in terms of their social roles.
Examples of grammatical gender systems:
masculine/feminine (for instance, French)
masculine/feminine/neuter (for instance, German)
animate/inanimate (for instance, Cree)
many noun classes (for instance, Swahili)

Gender / Noun Classes

French:
the moon = la lune (feminine)
the sun = le soleil (masculine)
German:
the moon = der Mond (masculine)
the sun = die Sonne (feminine)

Count vs. Mass Nouns

count nouns: chair, child
can be pluralized: chairs, children
can be counted: two chairs, five children
determiners: many chairs, few children
mass nouns: water, gold
cannot be pluralized: *waters, *golds
cannot be counted: *two waters, *five golds
determiners: much water, little gold

Classifier Classifiers are often used in connection with numbers to

indicate the type of thing being counted..

two pieces of furniture

fifty head of cattle
 three litres of water

Classifier Languages
In some languages, you always need to use a classifier when youre
counting
i.e., in a sense, all nouns behave like mass nouns
Classifiers usually say something about the shape and size of the
object
For instance:
five CL[round-object] balloon five balloons
two CL[long-object] pen two pens
three CL[flat-object] paper three sheets of paper

Differences inexpressiveness?
Many languages do not have grammatical tense
no grammatical distinction between present tense and past tense
John walk = John is walking or John was walking
Many languages do not have grammatical number
the form of the noun doesnt indicate singular vs. plural
I bought book = I bought one or more books

Differences in expressiveness?
On the other hand, many other languages have grammatical
distinctions that English lacks:
inclusive vs. exclusive
inclusive: the speaker and the addressee (and possibly others)
exclusive: the speaker and others, but not the addressee
recent vs. remote past
three-way number: singular vs. dual (2) vs. plural (3)
 evidentials grammatical morphemes indicating the source
and kind of evidence that the speaker has for the statement
e.g., visual, auditory, by hearsay, conjecture, etc.

Differences in expressiveness?
What are the implications of such differences?
Languages without grammatical number can still express how many
of a certain object there are:
numeral determiners (one, two, three, etc.)
quantifiers (all, some, many, few, etc.)
Languages without grammatical tense can still talk about the past and
the future:

adverbs (yesterday, a moment ago, in an hour, next week, .)

context (for instance, in a story)
Languages without grammatical evidentials (like English!) can still talk
about evidence, using expressions like:
alledgedly, supposedly, I guess, I was told that, I saw that, etc.

Differences inexpressiveness?
What are the implications of such differences?
Languages without grammatical number can still express how
many of a certain object there are:
numeral determiners (one, two, three, etc.)
quantifiers (all, some, many, few, etc.)
Languages without grammatical tense can still talk about the
past and the future:
adverbs (yesterday, a moment ago, in an hour, next week, .)
context (for instance, in a story)
Languages without grammatical evidentials (like English!) can
still talk about evidence, using expressions like:
alledgedly, supposedly, I guess, I was told that, I saw that, etc.