问答题
The relation of language and mind has interested philosophers for
many centuries. {{U}} {{U}} 1 {{/U}} {{/U}}{{U}}The Greeks assumed
that the structure of language had some connection with the process of thought,
which took root in Europe long before people realized how diverse languages
could be.{{/U}} Only recently did linguists begin the serious
study of languages that were very different from their own. Two
anthropologist-linguists, Franz Boas and Edward Sapir, were pioneers in
describing many native languages of North and South America during the first
half of the twentieth century. {{U}} {{U}} 2 {{/U}} {{/U}}{{U}}We
are obliged to them because some of these languages have since vanished, as the
peoples who spoke them died out or became assimilated and lost their native
languages.{{/U}} Other linguists in the earlier part of this century,
however, who were less eager to deal with bizarre data from "exotic" language,
were not always so grateful. {{U}} {{U}} 3 {{/U}} {{/U}}{{U}}The
newly described languages were often so strikingly different from the well
studied languages of Europe and Southeast Asia that some scholars even accused
Boas and Sapir of fabricating their data.{{/U}} Native American languages
are indeed different, so much so in fact that Navajo could be used by the US
military as a code during World War Ⅱ to send secret messages.
Sapir's pupil, Benjamin Lee Whorf, continued the study of American
Indian languages. {{U}} {{U}} 4 {{/U}} {{/U}}{{U}}Being interested
in the relationship of language and thought, Whorf developed the idea that the
structure of language determines the structure of habitual thought in a
society.{{/U}} He reasoned that because it is easier to formulate certain concepts
and not others in a given language, the speakers of that language think along
one track and not along another. {{U}} {{U}} 5 {{/U}}
{{/U}}{{U}}Whorf came to believe in a sort of linguistic determinism which, in its
strongest form, states that language imprisons the mind, and that the
grammatical patterns in a language can produce far-reaching consequences for the
culture of a society.{{/U}} Later, this idea became to be known as tile
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, but this term is somewhat inappropriate. Although both
Sapir and Whorf emphasized the diversity of languages, Sapir himself never
explicitly supported the notion of linguistic determinism.