Cognition and its Language: Episode 1
Part 1, Story 1:
A teacher is teaching a class. He writes a list of adjectives in red on the far left of the white board, and a list of nouns in blue on the far right. He asks the class to copy down what he has written. But when he begins to circle the room, he sees what the students have done... A solid line of word after word, no distinction between column of red adjectives or blue nouns...
Story 1, Quote A:
"The growing body of cross-cultural research... suggest[s] that the mind’s capacity to mold itself to cultural and environmental settings was far greater than had been assumed. The most interesting thing about cultures may not be in the observable things they do—the rituals, eating preferences, codes of behavior, and the like—but in the way they mold our most fundamental conscious and unconscious thinking and perception."
List A:
Read this list of words:
A student is learning Tibetan. She learns one word for to cry is mig chu btang. Noting the obvious etymology of the verb (which literally reads "to send eye-water"), she exclaims this revelation to her teacher... Who is not at first able to recognize the syllables of "eye" and "water" as separate units.
Story 2, Quote A:
"Unlike the vast majority of the world, Westerners (and Americans in particular) tend to reason analytically as opposed to holistically. That is, the American mind strives to figure out the world by taking it apart and examining its pieces." And this relates to the image of the self—seeing the self as independent from society seems to be correlated with seeing "parts" as independent from the "whole."
Reprise, List A:
English has the same sorts of etymological structures; it is just more often the case that they're obscured by their language of origin, be it Greek, Latin, German, or French. (Discoverable by one of my favorite sites http://www.etymonline.com/: dis- [opp. of prefix] + cover [to cover up], Latin).
Reread the list of words:
The simple truth is, as native speakers of the language, our perception of the words of our language is based on our relationships to those words—for us, a word of our mother tongue symbolizes a familiar concept, an actual experience; its not just a jumble of phonemes that we have to parse and investigate and then map onto words and concepts we already understand.
(For a discussion on Tibetan compounds, see Tournadre's Manual of Standard Tibetan, Appendix 5, pp. 455-459).
Part 2, Article 1:
Read this excellent article. (Both quotes from above are found within). Also note:
"In their paper the trio pointed out cross-cultural studies that suggest that the 'weird' Western mind is the most self-aggrandizing and egotistical on the planet: we are more likely to promote ourselves as individuals versus advancing as a group. WEIRD minds are also more analytic, possessing the tendency to telescope in on an object of interest rather than understanding that object in the context of what is around it."
"Some cultures regard the self as independent from others (Western cultures); others see the self as interdependent (Eastern cultures)."
Questions Raised by Article 1:
In what ways do the cognitive structures with which we perceive our world affect the ways in which we view (and use) language? What are the consequences, from a translation standpoint, of treating the Tibetan language as a parsable, analyzable set of grammatically linked data (ie, perceive it as a westerner) as opposed to a whole consisting of contextually related chunks of language that communicate a whole perceptual understanding wrapped up in the conceptual blanket of language (ie, are able to perceive it as a native speaker)?
Tentative Thoughts on Answers to these Questions:
Since encoding and acquiring language begins alongside (and due to) our very first experiences, the familiar landscape of our native language seems to be integrally entwined as a system that symbolically represents our most fundamental perceptions of the world around us. Therefore, to truly understand a language, the ability to see this world as someone within that world is a necessity in attaining the ability to translate with accuracy.
Language, when used or read by a native speaker, is not parsed or analyzed piece by piece, but exists as a whole (or, at best, as ill-defined "chunks" of idiomatic phrases and representational units). If and when it is parsable, this parsing most be done understanding how the pieces were created—that is, how the writer or speaker intended them to relate and represent his or her perceptions of the world and its interdependent parts.
... To be continued...
A teacher is teaching a class. He writes a list of adjectives in red on the far left of the white board, and a list of nouns in blue on the far right. He asks the class to copy down what he has written. But when he begins to circle the room, he sees what the students have done... A solid line of word after word, no distinction between column of red adjectives or blue nouns...
Story 1, Quote A:
"The growing body of cross-cultural research... suggest[s] that the mind’s capacity to mold itself to cultural and environmental settings was far greater than had been assumed. The most interesting thing about cultures may not be in the observable things they do—the rituals, eating preferences, codes of behavior, and the like—but in the way they mold our most fundamental conscious and unconscious thinking and perception."
List A:
Read this list of words:
- outskirts
- neighbor
- suburban
- highway
- manhole
A student is learning Tibetan. She learns one word for to cry is mig chu btang. Noting the obvious etymology of the verb (which literally reads "to send eye-water"), she exclaims this revelation to her teacher... Who is not at first able to recognize the syllables of "eye" and "water" as separate units.
Story 2, Quote A:
"Unlike the vast majority of the world, Westerners (and Americans in particular) tend to reason analytically as opposed to holistically. That is, the American mind strives to figure out the world by taking it apart and examining its pieces." And this relates to the image of the self—seeing the self as independent from society seems to be correlated with seeing "parts" as independent from the "whole."
Reprise, List A:
English has the same sorts of etymological structures; it is just more often the case that they're obscured by their language of origin, be it Greek, Latin, German, or French. (Discoverable by one of my favorite sites http://www.etymonline.com/: dis- [opp. of prefix] + cover [to cover up], Latin).
Reread the list of words:
- outskirts (out + skirts, ie, the border or edge, as in "to skirt the issue")
- neighbor (neigh [near]+ bor [dweller], Old Saxon)
- suburban (sub [below, near]+ urb [city], Latin)
- highway (high [main] + way, Old English)
- manhole (man + hole, a man-sized hole)
The simple truth is, as native speakers of the language, our perception of the words of our language is based on our relationships to those words—for us, a word of our mother tongue symbolizes a familiar concept, an actual experience; its not just a jumble of phonemes that we have to parse and investigate and then map onto words and concepts we already understand.
(For a discussion on Tibetan compounds, see Tournadre's Manual of Standard Tibetan, Appendix 5, pp. 455-459).
Part 2, Article 1:
Read this excellent article. (Both quotes from above are found within). Also note:
"In their paper the trio pointed out cross-cultural studies that suggest that the 'weird' Western mind is the most self-aggrandizing and egotistical on the planet: we are more likely to promote ourselves as individuals versus advancing as a group. WEIRD minds are also more analytic, possessing the tendency to telescope in on an object of interest rather than understanding that object in the context of what is around it."
"Some cultures regard the self as independent from others (Western cultures); others see the self as interdependent (Eastern cultures)."
Questions Raised by Article 1:
In what ways do the cognitive structures with which we perceive our world affect the ways in which we view (and use) language? What are the consequences, from a translation standpoint, of treating the Tibetan language as a parsable, analyzable set of grammatically linked data (ie, perceive it as a westerner) as opposed to a whole consisting of contextually related chunks of language that communicate a whole perceptual understanding wrapped up in the conceptual blanket of language (ie, are able to perceive it as a native speaker)?
Tentative Thoughts on Answers to these Questions:
Since encoding and acquiring language begins alongside (and due to) our very first experiences, the familiar landscape of our native language seems to be integrally entwined as a system that symbolically represents our most fundamental perceptions of the world around us. Therefore, to truly understand a language, the ability to see this world as someone within that world is a necessity in attaining the ability to translate with accuracy.
Language, when used or read by a native speaker, is not parsed or analyzed piece by piece, but exists as a whole (or, at best, as ill-defined "chunks" of idiomatic phrases and representational units). If and when it is parsable, this parsing most be done understanding how the pieces were created—that is, how the writer or speaker intended them to relate and represent his or her perceptions of the world and its interdependent parts.
... To be continued...
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