语言学哲学：构建和评估沃尔夫假说

注：机翻，未校。

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Supplement to Philosophy of Linguistics

Whorfianism 沃尔夫主义

Emergentists tend to follow Edward Sapir in taking an interest in interlinguistic and intralinguistic variation. Linguistic anthropologists have explicitly taken up the task of defending a famous claim associated with Sapir that connects linguistic variation to differences in thinking and cognition more generally. The claim is very often referred to as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (though this is a largely infelicitous label, as we shall see).
新兴论者倾向于追随爱德华・萨皮尔 （Edward Sapir） 对语言间和语言内变化的兴趣。语言人类学家已经明确承担起了捍卫与萨皮尔相关的著名主张的任务，该主张将语言变异与更普遍的思维和认知差异联系起来。这种说法通常被称为 Sapir-Whorf 假说（尽管正如我们将看到的，这在很大程度上是一个不恰当的标签）。

This topic is closely related to various forms of relativism—epistemological, ontological, conceptual, and moral—and its general outlines are discussed elsewhere in this encyclopedia; see the section on language in the Summer 2015 archived version of the entry on relativism (§3.1). Cultural versions of moral relativism suggest that, given how much cultures differ, what is moral for you might depend on the culture you were brought up in. A somewhat analogous view would suggest that, given how much language structures differ, what is thinkable for you might depend on the language you use. (This is actually a kind of conceptual relativism, but it is generally called linguistic relativism, and we will continue that practice.)
这个话题与各种形式的相对主义密切相关 —— 认识论、本体论、概念和道德 —— 其一般轮廓在本百科全书的其他地方进行了讨论；请参阅相对主义条目 （§3.1） 的 2015 年夏季存档版本中的语言部分。道德相对主义的文化版本表明，考虑到文化差异有多大，对你来说道德可能取决于你长大的文化。一个有点类似的观点是，考虑到语言结构的差异，你认为什么可能取决于你使用的语言。（这实际上是一种概念相对主义，但通常被称为语言相对主义，我们将继续这种做法。

Even a brief skim of the vast literature on the topic is not remotely plausible in this article; and the primary literature is in any case more often polemical than enlightening. It certainly holds no general answer to what science has discovered about the influences of language on thought. Here we offer just a limited discussion of the alleged hypothesis and the rhetoric used in discussing it, the vapid and not so vapid forms it takes, and the prospects for actually devising testable scientific hypotheses about the influence of language on thought.
在这篇文章中，即使是对关于这个主题的大量文献的简要浏览也不是合理的；无论如何，原始文献往往是争论性的，而不是启蒙性的。它当然没有对科学发现的关于语言对思想影响的一般性答案。在这里，我们只对所谓的假设和讨论它时使用的修辞进行了有限的讨论，它采取的乏味和不那么乏味的形式，以及实际设计关于语言对思想影响的可检验科学假设的前景。

Whorf himself did not offer a hypothesis. He presented his “new principle of linguistic relativity” (Whorf 1956: 214) as a fact discovered by linguistic analysis:
Whorf 本人没有提供假设。他提出了他的 “语言相对性新原理”（Whorf 1956：214）作为语言分析发现的事实：

When linguists became able to examine critically and scientifically a large number of languages of widely different patterns, their base of reference was expanded; they experienced an interruption of phenomena hitherto held universal, and a whole new order of significances came into their ken. It was found that the background linguistic system (in other words, the grammar) of each language is not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but rather is itself the shaper of ideas, the program and guide for the individual’s mental activity, for his analysis of impressions, for his synthesis of his mental stock in trade. Formulation of ideas is not an independent process, strictly rational in the old sense, but is part of a particular grammar, and differs, from slightly to greatly, between different grammars. We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds—and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way—an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of course, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees. (Whorf 1956: 212–214; emphasis in original)
当语言学家能够批判性和科学地研究大量模式迥异的语言时，他们的参考基础就扩大了；他们经历了迄今为止普遍存在的现象的中断，一个全新的意义秩序进入了他们的领域。研究发现，每种语言的背景语言系统（换句话说，语法）不仅仅是表达思想的复制工具，而且本身就是思想的塑造者，个人心理活动的程序和指南，用于分析印象，用于综合他的贸易心理储备。思想的形成不是一个独立的过程，严格来说是旧意义上的理性，而是特定语法的一部分，并且在不同的语法之间从轻微到很大地存在差异。我们沿着母语奠定的路线剖析自然。我们从现象世界中分离出来的类别和类型，我们在那里找不到，因为它们盯着每个观察者的脸；相反，世界呈现在万花筒般的印象流动中，必须由我们的头脑来组织 —— 这在很大程度上意味着我们头脑中的语言系统。我们把自然切碎，组织成概念，并赋予意义，这主要是因为我们是以这种方式组织它的协议的一方 —— 这个协议贯穿于我们的语言社区，并被编纂在我们的语言模式中。当然，该协议是隐含的、未说明的协议，但其条款是绝对强制性的；我们根本不能交谈，除非订阅协议规定的数据组织和分类。（Whorf 1956：212-214; 强调为原文所加）

Later, Whorf’s speculations about the “sensuously and operationally different” character of different snow types for “an Eskimo” (Whorf 1956: 216) developed into a familiar journalistic meme about the Inuit having dozens or scores or hundreds of words for snow; but few who repeat that urban legend recall Whorf’s emphasis on its being grammar, rather than lexicon, that cuts up and organizes nature for us.
后来，Whorf 关于 “爱斯基摩人” 不同雪类型的 “感官和操作上不同” 特征的猜测（Whorf 1956：216）发展成一个熟悉的新闻模因，即因纽特人有几十个、几十个或数百个词来表示雪；但很少有人记得 Whorf 强调它是语法，而不是词典，它为我们切割和组织自然。

In an article written in 1937, posthumously published in an academic journal (Whorf 1956: 87–101), Whorf clarifies what is most important about the effects of language on thought and world-view. He distinguishes ‘phenotypes’, which are overt grammatical categories typically indicated by morphemic markers, from what he called ‘cryptotypes’, which are covert grammatical categories, marked only implicitly by distributional patterns in a language that are not immediately apparent. In English, the past tense would be an example of a phenotype (it is marked by the -edsuffix in all regular verbs). Gender in personal names and common nouns would be an example of a cryptotype, not systematically marked by anything. In a cryptotype, “class membership of the word is not apparent until there is a question of using it or referring to it in one of these special types of sentence, and then we find that this word belongs to a class requiring some sort of distinctive treatment, which may even be the negative treatment of excluding that type of sentence” (p. 89).
在 1937 年写的一篇文章中，他死后发表在学术期刊上 （Whorf 1956： 87-101），阐明了语言对思想和世界观的影响最重要的是什么。他区分了 “表型” 和他所说的 “隐型”，前者是通常由语素标记表示的显性语法类别，后者是隐蔽的语法类别，仅由语言中的分布模式隐含地标记，这些分布模式并不立即明显。在英语中，过去时是表型的一个例子（在所有常规动词中都用 -ed 后缀标记）。人名和普通名词中的性别将是密码类型的一个例子，没有系统地用任何东西标记。在密码类型中，“这个词的类成员身份并不明显，直到在这些特殊类型的句子之一中出现使用或引用它的问题，然后我们发现这个词属于一个需要某种独特处理的类，这甚至可能是排除该类型句子的否定处理”（第 89 页）。

Whorf’s point is the familiar one that linguistic structure is comprised, in part, of distributional patterns in language use that are not explicitly marked. What follows from this, according to Whorf, is not that the existing lexemes in a language (like its words for snow) comprise covert linguistic structure, but that patterns shared by word classes constitute linguistic structure. In ‘Language, mind, and reality’ (1942; published posthumously inTheosophist, a magazine published in India for the followers of the 19th-century spiritualist Helena Blavatsky) he wrote:
Whorf 的观点是熟悉的，即语言结构部分由语言使用中的分布模式组成，这些模式没有明确标记。根据 Whorf 的说法，由此得出的并不是一种语言中现有的词素（如雪的词）构成了隐蔽的语言结构，而是词类共享的模式构成了语言结构。在《语言、思想和现实》（1942 年，死后发表在印度为 19 世纪唯灵论者海伦娜・布拉瓦茨基的追随者出版的杂志《神智论》）中，他写道：

Because of the systematic, configurative nature of higher mind, the “patternment” aspect of language always overrides and controls the “lexation”…or name-giving aspect. Hence the meanings of specific words are less important than we fondly fancy. Sentences, not words, are the essence of speech, just as equations and functions, and not bare numbers, are the real meat of mathematics. We are all mistaken in our common belief that any word has an “exact meaning.” We have seen that the higher mind deals in symbols that have no fixed reference to anything, but are like blank checks, to be filled in as required, that stand for “any value” of a given variable, like …thex,y,zof algebra. (Whorf 1942: 258)
由于高等思想的系统性、配置性，语言的 “模式化” 方面总是凌驾和控制 “词汇” … 或命名方面。因此，特定词的含义并不像我们喜欢的那么重要。句子，而不是单词，是语音的本质，就像方程和函数，而不是裸数字，是数学的真正核心。我们都错误地认为任何词都有 “确切的含义”。我们已经看到，高级思维处理的符号没有对任何事物的固定引用，而是像空白支票，根据需要填写，代表给定变量的 “任何值”，例如… 代数的 x、y、z。（沃尔夫 1942：258）

Whorf apparently thought that only personal and proper names have an exact meaning or reference (Whorf 1956: 259).
Whorf 显然认为只有人名和专有名词才具有确切的含义或引用（Whorf 1956：259）。

For Whorf, it was an unquestionable fact that language influences thought to some degree:
对 Whorf 来说，语言在某种程度上影响思想是一个毋庸置疑的事实：

Actually, thinking is most mysterious, and by far the greatest light upon it that we have is thrown by the study of language. This study shows that the forms of a person’s thoughts are controlled by inexorable laws of pattern of which he is unconscious. These patterns are the unperceived intricate systematizations of his own language—shown readily enough by a candid comparison and contrast with other languages, especially those of a different linguistic family. His thinking itself is in a language—in English, in Sanskrit, in Chinese. [footnote omitted] And every language is a vast pattern-system, different from others, in which are culturally ordained the forms and categories by which the personality not only communicates, but analyzes nature, notices or neglects types of relationship and phenomena, channels his reasoning, and builds the house of his consciousness. (Whorf 1956: 252)
事实上，思考是最神秘的，到目前为止，我们所拥有的对它的最大启示是由语言研究所抛出的。这项研究表明，一个人的思想形式受到他无意识的无情模式法则的控制。这些模式是他自己语言的未被察觉的错综复杂的系统化 —— 通过与其他语言的坦率比较和对比，尤其是那些来自不同语系的语言，很容易地表现出来。他的思想本身就是用一种语言的 —— 英文、梵文、中文。[脚注略去] 每一种语言都是一个巨大的模式系统，与其他语言不同，其中文化规定了人格不仅交流的形式和类别，而且分析自然，注意或忽视各种关系和现象，引导他的推理，并建造他的意识之家。（沃尔夫 1956：252）

He seems to regard it as necessarily true that language affects thought, given the fact that language must be used in order to think, and the facts about language structure that linguistic analysis discovers.
他似乎认为语言影响思想是必然的，因为必须使用语言才能思考的事实，以及语言分析发现的有关语言结构的事实。

He also seems to presume that the only structure and logic that thought has is grammatical structure. These views are not the ones that after Whorf’s death came to be known as ‘the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis’ (a sobriquet due to Hoijer 1954). Nor are they what was called the ‘Whorf thesis’ by Brown and Lenneberg (1954) which was concerned with the relation of obligatory lexical distinctions and thought. Brown and Lenneberg (1954) investigated this question by looking at the relation of color terminology in a language and the classificatory abilities of the speakers of that language. The issue of the relation between obligatory lexical distinctions and thought is at the heart of what is now called ‘the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis’ or ‘the Whorf Hypothesis’ or ‘Whorfianism’.
他似乎还假设思想所具有的唯一结构和逻辑是语法结构。这些观点并不是在 Whorf 去世后被称为 “Sapir-Whorf 假说”（Hoijer 1954 的讽刺）的观点。它们也不是 Brown 和 Lenneberg （1954） 所谓的 “Whorf 论文”，后者关注强制性词汇区分和思想的关系。Brown 和 Lenneberg （1954） 通过研究语言中颜色术语与该语言使用者的分类能力之间的关系来研究这个问题。强制性词汇区分与思想之间的关系问题是现在所谓的 “萨皮尔 - 沃尔夫假说” 或 “沃尔夫假说” 或 “沃尔夫主义” 的核心。

1. Banal Whorfianism 1. 平庸的沃尔夫假设

一种较为肤浅或简化的语言相对论观点，强调语言在影响思维和世界观方面的作用，但缺乏更深层次的分析和探讨。

No one is going to be impressed with a claim that some aspect of your language may affect how you think in some way or other; that is neither a philosophical thesis nor a psychological hypothesis. So it is appropriate to set aside entirely the kind of so-called hypotheses that Steven Pinker presents in The Stuff of Thought(2007: 126–128) as “five banal versions of the Whorfian hypothesis”:
没有人会因为你语言的某些方面可能会以某种方式影响你的思维方式的说法而留下深刻印象；这既不是哲学论点，也不是心理学假设。因此，将史蒂文・平克（Steven Pinker）在《思维的要素》（The Stuff of Thought，2007：126-128）中提出的那种所谓的假设完全放在一边是适当的，即 “Whorfian 假说的五个平庸版本”：

• “Language affects thought because we get much of our knowledge through reading and conversation.”
  “语言影响思想，因为我们通过阅读和对话获得大部分知识。”
• “A sentence can frame an event, affecting the way people construe it.”
  “一句话可以构成一个事件，影响人们解释它的方式。”
• “The stock of words in a language reflects the kinds of things its speakers deal with in their lives and hence think about.”
  “一种语言中的单词库反映了其使用者在生活中处理并因此思考的各种事情。”
• “[I] f one uses the word language in a loose way to refer to meanings,… then language is thought.”
  “如果一个人以一种松散的方式使用语言这个词来指代意义，… 然后语言就是思想。
• “When people think about an entity, among the many attributes they can think about is its name.”
  “当人们想到一个实体时，他们可以考虑的众多属性之一是它的名称。”

These are just truisms, unrelated to any serious issue about linguistic relativism.
这些只是老生常谈，与任何关于语言相对主义的严肃问题无关。

We should also set aside some methodological versions of linguistic relativism discussed in anthropology. It may be excellent advice to a budding anthropologist to be aware of linguistic diversity, and to be on the lookout for ways in which your language may affect your judgment of other cultures; but such advice does not constitute a hypothesis.
我们还应该搁置人类学中讨论的语言相对主义的一些方法论版本。对于一个崭露头角的人类学家来说，意识到语言的多样性，并注意你的语言可能影响你对其他文化的判断的方式，这可能是一个极好的建议；但这样的建议并不构成假设。

2. The so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis 2. 所谓的 Sapir-Whorf 假说

The term “Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis” was coined by Harry Hoijer in his contribution (Hoijer 1954) to a conference on the work of Benjamin Lee Whorf in 1953. But anyone looking in Hoijer’s paper for a clear statement of the hypothesis will look in vain. Curiously, despite his stated intent “to review and clarify the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis” (1954: 93), Hoijer did not even attempt to state it. The closest he came was this:
“Sapir-Whorf 假说” 一词是由 Harry Hoijer 在 1953 年对 Benjamin Lee Whorf 工作会议的贡献（Hoijer 1954）中创造的。但是，任何在 Hoijer 的论文中寻找该假设的明确陈述的人都会徒劳无功。奇怪的是，尽管他声称打算 “回顾和澄清 Sapir-Whorf 假说”（1954：93），但 Hoijer 甚至没有试图陈述它。他最接近的是：

The central idea of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is that language functions, not simply as a device for reporting experience, but also, and more significantly, as a way of defining experience for its speakers.
Sapir-Whorf 假说的中心思想是，语言的功能不仅仅是作为报告经验的工具，而且更重要的是，作为一种为说话者定义经验的方式。

The claim that “language functions…as a way of defining experience” appears to be offered as a kind of vague metaphysical insight rather than either a statement of linguistic relativism or a testable hypothesis.
“语言功能… 作为定义经验的一种方式 “似乎是一种模糊的形而上学见解，而不是语言相对主义的陈述或可检验的假设。

And if Hoijer seriously meant that what qualitative experiences a speakercanhave are constituted by that speaker’s language, then surely the claim is false. There is no reason to doubt that non-linguistic sentient creatures like cats can experience (for example) pain or heat or hunger, so having a language is not a necessary condition for having experiences. And it is surely not sufficient either: a robot with a sophisticated natural language processing capacity could be designed without the capacity for conscious experience.
如果 Hoijer 认真地表示，说话者可以拥有的定性体验是由该说话者的语言构成的，那么这种说法肯定是错误的。没有理由怀疑像猫这样的非语言有知觉的生物可以经历（例如）痛苦、炎热或饥饿，因此拥有一种语言并不是拥有体验的必要条件。而且这肯定也是不够的：一个具有复杂自然语言处理能力的机器人可以在没有意识体验能力的情况下被设计出来。

In short, it is a mystery what Hoijer meant by his “central idea”.
简而言之，Hoijer 所说的 “中心思想” 是什么意思是一个谜。

Vague remarks of the same loosely metaphysical sort have continued to be a feature of the literature down to the present. The statements made in some recent papers, even in respected refereed journals, contain non-sequiturs echoing some of the remarks of Sapir, Whorf, and Hoijer. And they come from both sides of the debate.
直到现在，同样松散的形而上学类型的模糊评论仍然是文学的一个特征。在最近的一些论文中所做的陈述，甚至在受人尊敬的参考期刊上，都包含与 Sapir、Whorf 和 Hoijer 的一些评论相呼应的非连续性。他们来自辩论的两方。

3. Anti-Whorfian rhetoric 3. 反 Whorfian 的言论

Lila Gleitman is an Essentialist on the other side of the contemporary debate: she is against linguistic relativism, and against the broadly Whorfian work of Stephen Levinson’s group at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. In the context of criticizing a particular research design, Li and Gleitman (2002) quote Whorf’s claim that “language is the factor that limits free plasticity and rigidifies channels of development”. But in the claim cited, Whorf seems to be talking about the psychological topic that holds universally of human conceptual development, not claiming that linguistic relativism is true.
莉拉・格莱特曼（Lila Gleitman）是当代辩论另一方的本质主义者：她反对语言相对主义，也反对马克斯・普朗克心理语言学研究所（Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics）的斯蒂芬・莱文森（Stephen Levinson）小组的广义 Whorfian 工作。在批评特定研究设计的背景下，Li 和 Gleitman （2002） 引用了 Whorf 的主张，即 “语言是限制自由可塑性和僵化发展渠道的因素”。但在引用的主张中，Whorf 似乎在谈论普遍适用于人类概念发展的心理学话题，而不是声称语言相对主义是正确的。

Li and Gleitman then claim (p. 266) that such (Whorfian) views “have diminished considerably in academic favor” in part because of “the universalist position of Chomskian linguistics, with its potential for explaining the striking similarity of language learning in children all over the world.” But there is no clear conflict or even a conceptual connection between Whorf’s views about language placing limits on developmental plasticity, and Chomsky’s thesis of an innate universal architecture for syntax. In short, there is no reason why Chomsky’s I-languages could not be innately constrained, but (once acquired) cognitively and developmentally constraining.
李和格莱特曼接着声称（第 266 页）这种（Whorfian）观点 “在学术上的支持已经大大减少”，部分原因是 “乔姆斯基语言学的普遍主义立场，它有可能解释世界各地儿童语言学习的惊人相似性”。但是，Whorf 关于语言限制发展可塑性的观点与 Chomsky 关于语法的天生通用架构的论点之间没有明显的冲突，甚至没有概念上的联系。简而言之，乔姆斯基的 I 语言没有理由不受到天生的约束，而是（一旦获得）认知和发展的约束。

For example, the supposedly deep linguistic universal of ‘recursion’ (Hauser et al. 2002) is surely quite independent of whether the inventory of colour-name lexemes in your language influences the speed with which you can discriminate between color chips. And conversely, universal tendencies in color naming across languages (Kay and Regier 2006) donotshow that color-naming differences among languages are without effect on categorical perception (Thierry et al. 2009).
例如，“递归” 的所谓深层语言普遍性（Hauser et al. 2002）肯定与你的语言中的颜色名称词素清单是否影响你区分色卡的速度完全无关。相反，跨语言颜色命名的普遍趋势（Kay 和 Regier 2006）并未表明语言之间的颜色命名差异对分类感知没有影响（Thierry et al. 2009）。

4. Strong and weak Whorfianism 4. 强弱 Whorfianism

One of the first linguists to defend a general form of universalism against linguistic relativism, thus presupposing that they conflict, was Julia Penn (1972). She was also an early popularizer of the distinction between ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ formulations of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (and an opponent of the ‘strong’ version).
最早为普遍形式的普遍主义辩护反对语言相对主义的语言学家之一，从而假设它们之间存在冲突，是 Julia Penn （1972）。她也是 Sapir-Whorf 假说的 “强” 和 “弱” 表述区别的早期普及者（也是 “强” 版本的反对者）。

‘Weak’ versions of Whorfianism state that languageinfluencesor defeasibly shapes thought. ‘Strong’ versions state that languagedeterminesthought, or fixes it in some way. The weak versions are commonly dismissed as banal (because of course there must besomeinfluence), and the stronger versions as implausible.
Whorfianism 的 “弱” 版本指出，语言影响或无理地塑造了思想。“强” 版本指出语言决定思想，或以某种方式修复思想。弱版本通常被认为是平庸的（因为当然必须有一些影响），而强版本则被认为难以置信。

The weak versions are considered banal because they are not adequately formulated as testable hypotheses that could conflict with relevant evidence about language and thought.
弱版本被认为是平庸的，因为它们没有被充分表述为可能与语言和思想的相关证据相冲突的可检验假设。

Why would the strong versions be thought implausible? For a language to make us think in a particular way, it might seem that it must at least temporarily prevent us from thinking in other ways, and thus make some thoughts not only inexpressible but unthinkable. If this were true, then strong Whorfianism would conflict with the Katzian effability claim. There would be thoughts that a person couldn’t think because of the language (s) they speak.
为什么强版本会被认为不可信？对于一种语言来说，要使我们以特定的方式思考，它似乎至少必须暂时阻止我们以其他方式思考，从而使一些思想不仅无法表达，而且不可想象。如果这是真的，那么强 Whorfianism 将与 Katzian 有效性声明相冲突。会有一些想法，一个人会因为他们说的语言而无法思考。

Some are fascinated by the idea that there are inaccessible thoughts; and the notion that learning a new language gives access to entirely new thoughts and concepts seems to be a staple of popular writing about the virtues of learning languages. But many scientists and philosophers intuitively rebel against violations of effability: thinking about concepts that no one has yet named is part of their job description.
有些人对存在无法接近的思想的想法着迷；学习一门新语言可以接触到全新的思想和概念，这似乎是关于学习语言优点的流行著作的主要内容。但许多科学家和哲学家直觉上反对违反有效性的行为：思考还没有人说出的概念是他们工作描述的一部分。

The resolution lies in seeing that the language couldaffect certain aspects of our cognitive functioning without making certain thoughts unthinkable for us.
解决方案在于看到语言可以影响我们认知功能的某些方面，而不会使某些想法对我们来说是不可想象的。

For example, Greek has separate terms for what we call light blue and dark blue, and no word meaning what ‘blue’ means in English: Greek forces a choice on this distinction. Experiments have shown (Thierry et al. 2009) that native speakers of Greek react faster when categorizing light blue and dark blue color chips—apparently a genuine effect of language on thought. But that does not make English speakers blind to the distinction, or imply that Greek speakers cannot grasp the idea of a hue falling somewhere between green and violet in the spectrum.
例如，希腊语对我们所说的浅蓝色和深蓝色有单独的术语，而没有单词表示 “蓝色” 在英语中的含义：希腊语迫使人们选择这种区别。实验表明（Thierry et al. 2009）以希腊语为母语的人在对浅蓝色和深蓝色色片进行分类时反应更快 —— 这显然是语言对思想的真正影响。但这并不意味着说英语的人对这种区别视而不见，也不意味着说希腊语的人无法理解光谱中介于绿色和紫色之间的色调的概念。

There is no general or global ineffability problem. There is, though, a peculiar aspect of strong Whorfian claims, giving them a local analog of ineffability: the content of such a claimcannot be expressed in any language it is true of. This does not make the claims self-undermining (as with the standard objections to relativism); it doesn’t even mean that they are untestable. They are somewhat anomalous, but nothing follows concerning the speakers of the language in question (except that they cannot state the hypothesis using the basic vocabulary and grammar that they ordinarily use).
不存在一般或全局的不可言表性问题。然而，强有力的 Whorfian 主张有一个奇特的方面，使它们具有不可言喻性的局部模拟：这种主张的内容不能用任何语言来表达。这并不意味着这些主张是自我破坏的（就像对相对主义的标准反对一样）; 这甚至不意味着它们是不可测试的。他们有些异常，但关于所讨论语言的使用者没有任何结论（除了他们不能使用他们通常使用的基本词汇和语法来陈述假设）。

If there were a true hypothesis about the limits that basic English vocabulary and constructions puts on what English speakers can think, the hypothesis would turn out to be inexpressible in English, using basic vocabulary and the usual repertoire of constructions. That might mean it would be hard for us to discuss it in an article in English unless we used terminological innovations or syntactic workarounds. But that doesn’t imply anything about English speakers’ ability to grasp concepts, or to develop new ways of expressing them by coining new words or elaborated syntax.
如果有一个关于基本英语词汇和结构对英语使用者的思考能力的限制的真实假设，那么这个假设在英语中将是无法表达的，使用基本词汇和通常的结构库。这可能意味着我们很难在英文文章中讨论它，除非我们使用术语创新或语法解决方法。但这并不意味着说英语的人有能力理解概念，或者通过创造新词或精心设计的句法来开发新的表达方式。

5. Constructing and evaluating Whorfian hypotheses 5. 构建和评估 Whorfian 假设

A number of considerations are relevant to formulating, testing, and evaluating Whorfian hypotheses.
许多考虑因素与制定、测试和评估 Whorfian 假设有关。

Genuine hypotheses about the effects of language on thought will always have a duality: there will be a linguistic part and a non-linguistic one. The linguistic part will involve a claim that some feature is present in one language but absent in another.
关于语言对思想影响的真正假设总是具有二元性：将有语言部分和非语言部分。语言部分将涉及一种声明，即某些特征存在于一种语言中，但在另一种语言中不存在。

Whorf himself saw that it was only obligatory features of languages that established “mental patterns” or “habitual thought” (Whorf 1956: 139), since if it were optional then the speaker could optionally do it one way or do it the other way. And so this would not be a case of “constraining the conceptual structure”. So we will likewise restrict our attention to obligatory features here.
Whorf 自己看到，只有语言的强制性特征才能建立 “心理模式” 或 “习惯性思维”（Whorf 1956：139），因为如果它是可选的，那么说话者可以选择以一种方式或另一种方式来做。因此，这不会是 “限制概念结构” 的情况。因此，我们同样将注意力限制在这里的强制性特征上。

Examples of relevant obligatory features would include lexical distinctions like the light vs. dark blue forced choice in Greek, or the forced choice between “in (fitting tightly)” vs. “in (fitting loosely)” in Korean. They also include grammatical distinctions like the forced choice in Spanish 2nd-person pronouns between informal/intimate and formal/distant (informaltúvs. formalustedin the singular; informalvosotrosvs. formalustedesin the plural), or the forced choice in Tamil 1st-person plural pronouns between inclusive (“we = me and you and perhaps others”) and exclusive (“we = me and others not including you”).
相关强制性特征的示例包括词汇区别，如希腊语中的浅蓝色与深蓝色强制选择，或韩语中 “in （fit tightly）” 与 “in （fit loosely）” 之间的强制选择。它们还包括语法区别，例如西班牙语第二人称代词中非正式 / 亲密和正式 / 遥远之间的强制选择（非正式的 tú 与正式的单数 usted; 非正式的 vosotros 与正式的 ustedes 在复数中），或泰米尔语第一人称复数代词在包容性（“我们 = 我和你，也许还有其他人”）和排他性（“我们 = 我和其他人不包括你”）之间的强制选择。

The non-linguistic part of a Whorfian hypothesis will contrast the psychological effects that habitually using the two languages has on their speakers. For example, one might conjecture that the habitual use of Spanish induces its speakers to be sensitive to the formal and informal character of the speaker’s relationship with their interlocutor while habitually using English does not.
Whorfian 假说的非语言部分将对比习惯性使用这两种语言对说话者产生的心理影响。例如，人们可能会推测，习惯性地使用西班牙语会促使说话者对说话者与对话者关系的正式和非正式特征敏感，而习惯性地使用英语则不会。

So testing Whorfian hypotheses requires testing two independent hypotheses with the appropriate kinds of data. In consequence, evaluating them requires the expertise of both linguistics and psychology, and is a multidisciplinary enterprise. Clearly, the linguistic hypothesis may hold up where the psychological hypothesis does not, or conversely.
因此，检验 Whorfian 假设需要使用适当类型的数据检验两个独立的假设。因此，评估它们需要语言学和心理学的专业知识，并且是一项多学科的工作。显然，语言学假说可能在心理学假说不成立的地方成立，或者相反。

In addition, if linguists discovered that some linguistic feature was optional in two different languages, then even if psychological experiments showed differences between the two populations of speakers, this would not show linguistic determination or influence. The cognitive differences might depend on (say) cultural differences.
此外，如果语言学家发现某些语言特征在两种不同的语言中是可选的，那么即使心理学实验显示两种说话群体之间存在差异，这也不会显示语言的决定或影响。认知差异可能取决于（比如）文化差异。

A further important consideration concerns the strength of the inducement relationship that a Whorfian hypothesis posits between a speaker’s language and their non-linguistic capacities. The claim that your language shapes or influences your cognition is quite different from the claim that your language makes certain kinds of cognition impossible (or obligatory) for you. The strength of any Whorfian hypothesis will vary depending on the kind of relationship being claimed, and the ease of revisability of that relation.
另一个重要的考虑因素涉及 Whorfian 假说假设的说话者的语言与其非语言能力之间的诱导关系的强度。你的语言塑造或影响你的认知的说法与你的语言使某些类型的认知对你来说是不可能的（或强制性的）的说法是完全不同的。任何 Whorfian 假说的强度都会根据所声称的关系类型以及该关系的难易修改性而变化。

A testable Whorfian hypothesis will have a schematic form something like this:
一个可检验的 Whorfian 假设将具有如下所示的示意图形式：

• Linguistic part: FeatureFis obligatory inL1 but optional inL2.
  语言部分：特征 F 在 L1 中是强制性的，但在 L2 中是可选的。
• Psychological part: Speaking a language with obligatory featureFbears relationRto the cognitive effectC.
  心理部分：说一种具有强制性特征 F 的语言与 R 与认知效应 C 有关。

The relationRmight in principle be causation or determination, but it is important to see that it might merely be correlation, or slight favoring; and the non-linguistic cognitive effectCmight be readily suppressible or revisable.
关系 R 原则上可能是因果关系或决定性，但重要的是要看到它可能只是相关性，或略微偏爱；非语言认知效应 C 可能很容易被抑制或修正。

Dan Slobin (1996) presents a view that competes with Whorfian hypotheses as standardly understood. He hypothesizes thatwhen the speakers are using their cognitive abilities in the service of a linguistic ability(speaking, writing, translating, etc.), the language they are planning to use to express their thought will have a temporary online effect on how they express their thought. The claim is that as long as language users are thinking in order to frame their speech or writing or translation in some language, the mandatory features of that language will influence the way they think.
Dan Slobin （1996） 提出了一个观点，该观点与标准理解的 Whorfian 假设相竞争。他假设，当说话者利用他们的认知能力为语言能力服务（口语、写作、翻译等）时，他们计划用来表达思想的语言将对他们表达思想的方式产生暂时的在线影响。其主张是，只要语言使用者在思考以某种语言构建他们的语音、写作或翻译，该语言的强制性特征就会影响他们的思维方式。

On Slobin’s view, these effects quickly attenuate as soon as the activity of thinking for speaking ends. For example, if a speaker is thinking for writing in Spanish, then Slobin’s hypothesis would predict that given the obligatory formal/informal 2nd-person pronoun distinction they would pay greater attention to the formal/informal character of their social relationships with their audience than if they were writing in English. But this effect is not permanent. As soon as they stop thinking for speaking, the effect of Spanish on their thought ends.
在 Slobin 看来，一旦为说话而思考的活动结束，这些影响就会迅速减弱。例如，如果说话者正在考虑用西班牙语写作，那么 Slobin 的假设将预测，鉴于强制性的正式 / 非正式第二人称代词区别，他们会比用英语写作更关注他们与听众的社会关系的正式 / 非正式特征。但这种影响不是永久性的。一旦他们停止思考说话，西班牙语对他们思想的影响就结束了。

Slobin’s non-Whorfian linguistic relativist hypothesis raises the importance of psychological research on bilinguals or people who currently use two or more languages with a native or near-native facility. This is because one clear way to test Slobin-like hypotheses relative to Whorfian hypotheses would be to find out whether language correlated non-linguistic cognitive differences between speakers hold for bilinguals only when are thinking for speaking in one language, but not when they are thinking for speaking in some other language. If the relevant cognitive differences appeared and disappeared depending on which language speakers were planning to express themselves in, it would go some way to vindicate Slobin-like hypotheses over more traditional Whorfian Hypotheses. Of course, one could alternately accept a broadening of Whorfian hypotheses to include Slobin-like evanescent effects. Either way, attention must be paid to the persistence and revisability of the linguistic effects.
Slobin 的非 Whorfian 语言相对主义假说提高了对双语者或目前使用两种或两种以上语言但具有母语或接近母语设施的人进行心理学研究的重要性。这是因为检验相对于 Whorfian 假设的 Slobin 类假设的一种明确方法是找出说话者之间的语言相关非语言认知差异是否仅适用于双语者，当他们考虑说另一种语言时则不成立。如果相关的认知差异的出现和消失取决于说话者计划用哪种语言表达自己，那么它将在某种程度上证明类似 Slobin 的假设优于更传统的 Whorfian 假设。当然，人们也可以接受 Whorfian 假说的扩大，以包括类似 Slobin 的转瞬即逝效应。无论哪种方式，都必须注意语言效果的持久性和可修改性。

Kousta et al. (2008) shows that “for bilinguals there is intraspeaker relativity in semantic representations and, therefore, [grammatical] gender does not have a conceptual, non-linguistic effect” (843). Grammatical gender is obligatory in the languages in which it occurs and has been claimed by Whorfians to have persistent and enduring non-linguistic effects on representations of objects (Boroditsky et al. 2003). However, Kousta et al. supports the claim that bilinguals’ semantic representations vary depending on which language they are using, and thus have transient effects. This suggests that although some semantic representations of objects may vary from language to language, their non-linguistic cognitive effects are transitory.
Kousta et al. （2008） 表明，“对于双语者来说，语义表征中存在说话人内部的相对性，因此，[语法] 性别没有概念性的、非语言的影响”（843）。语法性别在它出现的语言中是强制性的，并且 Whorfians 声称对物体的表示具有持久和持久的非语言影响（Boroditsky 等人，2003 年）。然而，Kousta 等人支持这样的说法，即双语者的语义表示根据他们使用的语言而变化，因此具有瞬态效应。这表明，尽管对象的某些语义表示可能因语言而异，但它们的非语言认知影响是暂时的。

Some advocates of Whorfianism have held that if Whorfian hypotheses were true, then meaning would be globally and radically indeterminate. Thus, the truth of Whorfian hypotheses is equated with global linguistic relativism—a well known self-undermining form of relativism. But as we have seen, not all Whorfian hypotheses are global hypotheses: they are about what is induced by particular linguistic features. And the associated non-linguistic perceptual and cognitive differences can be quite small, perhaps insignificant. For example, Thierry et al. (2009) provides evidence that an obligatory lexical distinction between light and dark blue affects Greek speakers’ color perception in the left hemisphere only. And the question of the degree to which this affects sensuous experience is not addressed.
一些 Whorfian 学派的倡导者认为，如果 Whorfian 假说是正确的，那么意义将是全局性的、根本性的不确定的。因此，Whorfian 假说的真理等同于全球语言相对主义 —— 一种众所周知的自我破坏的相对主义形式。但正如我们所看到的，并非所有的 Whorfian 假说都是全局假说：它们是关于由特定语言特征引起的。相关的非语言感知和认知差异可能非常小，也许微不足道。例如，Thierry et al. （2009） 提供的证据表明，浅蓝色和深蓝色之间的强制性词汇区分仅影响希腊语使用者在左半球的颜色感知。而这在多大程度上影响感官体验的问题并没有得到解决。

The fact that Whorfian hypotheses need not be global linguistic relativist hypotheses means that they do not conflict with the claim that there are language universals. Structuralists of the first half of the 20th century tended to disfavor the idea of universals: Martin Joos’s characterization of structuralist linguistics as claiming that “languages can differ without limit as to either extent or direction” (Joos 1966, 228) has been much quoted in this connection. If the claim that languages can vary without limit were conjoined with the claim that languages have significant and permanent effects on the concepts and worldview of their speakers, a truly profound global linguistic relativism would result. But neither conjunct should be accepted. Joos’s remark is regarded by nearly all linguists today as overstated (and merely a caricature of the structuralists), and Whorfian hypotheses do not have to take a global or deterministic form.
Whorfian 假说不一定是全球语言相对主义假说，这一事实意味着它们与存在语言普遍性的主张并不冲突。20 世纪上半叶的结构主义者倾向于不赞成普遍性的概念：马丁・乔斯 （Martin Joos） 对结构主义语言学的描述声称 “语言在范围或方向上可以无限地不同”（Joos 1966,228）在这方面被广泛引用。如果语言可以无限变化的说法与语言对说话者的概念和世界观有重大和永久影响的说法结合起来，就会产生一个真正深刻的全球语言相对主义。但这两个连词都不应该被接受。今天几乎所有的语言学家都认为 Joos 的评论被夸大了（仅仅是对结构主义者的讽刺），而 Whorfian 假设不必采取全局或决定论的形式。

John Lucy, a conscientious and conservative researcher of Whorfian hypotheses, has remarked:
约翰・露西 （John Lucy） 是一位认真而保守的 Whorfian 假说研究者，他评论道：

We still know little about the connections between particular language patterns and mental life—let alone how they operate or how significant they are…a mere handful of empirical studies address the linguistic relativity proposal directly and nearly all are conceptually flawed. (Lucy 1996, 37)
我们对特定语言模式和心理生活之间的联系仍然知之甚少 —— 更不用说它们是如何运作的或它们的重要性了… 只有少数实证研究直接解决了语言相对论的提议，而且几乎所有研究在概念上都存在缺陷。（露西 1996,37）

Although further empirical studies on Whorfian hypotheses have been completed since Lucy published his 1996 review article, it is hard to find any that have satisfied the criteria of:
尽管自 Lucy 在 1996 年发表他的评论文章以来，已经完成了对 Whorfian 假设的进一步实证研究，但很难找到任何满足以下标准的：

• adequately utilizing both the relevant linguistic and psychological research, focusing on obligatory rather than optional linguistic features, stating hypotheses in a clear testable way, and ruling out relevant competing Slobin-like hypotheses.
  充分利用相关的语言和心理学研究，专注于强制性而不是可选的语言特征，以清晰可测试的方式陈述假设，以及排除了相关的竞争性 Slobin 样假设。

There is much important work yet to be done on testing the range of Whorfian hypotheses and other forms of linguistic conceptual relativism, and on understanding the significance of any Whorfian hypotheses that turn out to be well supported.
在检验 Whorfian 假说的范围和其他形式的语言概念相对主义，以及理解任何被证明得到充分支持的 Whorfian 假说的重要性方面，还有很多重要的工作要做。

Copyright © 2024 by Barbara C. Scholz

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via：Philosophy of Linguistics > Whorfianism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/linguistics/whorfianism.html