Gentner Dedre, Goldin-Meadow Susan (Editors). Language in Mind: Advances in the Study of Language and Thought

The MIT Press. 2003. — 538 p. — ISBN: 0262072432.The idea that the language we speak influences the way we think has evoked perennial fascination and intense controversy. According to the strong version of this hypothesis, called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis after the American linguists who propounded it, languages vary in their semantic partitioning of the world, and the structure of one's language influences how one understands the world. Thus speakers of different languages perceive the world differently. Although the last two decades have been marked by extreme skepticism concerning the possible effects of language on thought, recent theoretical and methodological advances in cognitive science have given the question new life. Research in linguistics and linguistic anthropology has revealed striking differences in cross-linguistic semantic patterns, and cognitive psychology has developed subtle techniques for studying how people represent and remember experience. It is now possible to test predictions about how a given language influences the thinking of its speakers.Language in Mind includes contributions from both skeptics and believers and from a range of fields. It contains work in cognitive psychology, cognitive development, linguistics, anthropology, and animal cognition. The topics discussed include space, number, motion, gender, theory of mind, thematic roles, and the ontological distinction between objects and substances. The contributors include Melissa Bowerman, Eve Clark, Jill de Villiers, Peter de Villiers, Giyoo Hatano, Stan Kuczaj, Barbara Landau, Stephen Levinson, John Lucy, Barbara Malt, Dan Slobin, Steven Sloman, Elizabeth Spelke, and Michael Tomasello.Whither Whorf
Position Statements
Languages and Representations
Language and Mind: Let’s Get the Issues Straight!
The Key Is Social Cognition
Languageas Lens: Does the Language We Acquire Influence How We See the World?
Sex, Syntax, and Semantics
Speaking versus Thinking about Objects and Actions
The Effects of Spatial Language on Spatial Repr esentation: Setting Some Boundaries
Language and Thought Online: Cognitive Consequences of Linguistic Relativity
Language as Tool Kit: Does the Language We Acquire Augment Our Capacity for Higher-Order Representation and Reas oning?
Why We’re So Smart
Does Langu age Help Animals Think?
What Makes Us Smart? Core Knowledge and Natural Lang uage
Conceptual and Linguistic Factors in Inductive Projection: How Do Young Children Recognize Commonalities between Ani mals and Plants?
Language for Thought: Coming to Understand False Beliefs
Language as Category Maker: Does the Language We Acquire Influence Where We Make Our Category Distinctions?
Space under Construction: Language-Specific Spatial Categorization in First Language Acquisition
Reevaluating Linguistic Relativity: Language-Specific Categories and the Role of Universal Ontological Knowledge in the Construal of Individuation
Intera ction of Language Type and Referent Type in the Development of Nonverbal Classification Prefer ences
Thought before Language: Do We Think Ergative?