问答题 Eskimos have many different words for different types of snow, Aborigines for different types of sand, and in Arabic one must choose from a whole range of words which are subsumed under the Western category CAMEL. Can you explain these phenomena with your linguistic knowledge? (北航2008研)
【正确答案】正确答案:These phenomena can be explained from the following perspectives: (1) These phenomena show a relationship between language and society. Language changes from region to region, from one social group to another and from individual to individual. The living environment makes great impact on the changes of language. As Eskimo are always living in an environment of a snow world, they have made a good cognition to snow and classified it in different types. Human use language to describe the world they have cognized. (2) These phenomena can be explained from the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. This hypothesis suggests that: our language helps mould our way of thinking and, consequently, different languages may probably express speaker's unique ways of understanding the world. So Eskimos's different words for different types of snow reflect their different ways to understand snow.
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