Date: Mon Aug 20 2001 - 17:53:16 PDT

From:	Garold (Gary) L. Johnson
	dynalt@dynalt.com)

To:	unrev-II@yahoogroups.com

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Subject:

Thinking about communicating

Whether language shapes the ability to think or the world view may be open to question, but the concepts that underlie a language can certainly affect the nature of thought and absolutely impact communication.
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As an example of this, look at the problems that some people experience moving from a relatively simple computer language like BASIC or FORTRAN to a modern object oriented language like C++ or Java. Or a different linear language such as FORTH.

The languages are not so dramatically different as to cause a problem, but the paradigms *are* dramatically different. Moving from a primitive BASIC that has no true subroutines and only global variables to a fully OO language provides challenges not only in language but in the fundamental concepts and structures that those languages manipulate.
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A language without regular expressions is far more difficult to use for processing text than a language that has regular expressions integrated into the language.

We write small languages of all sorts all the time because it allows users to be more productive in the domain that the language is designed to handle.

Consider any specialist jargon -- there isn't likely anything that specialists can discuss in jargon that couldn't be discussed in ordinary English -- with about 20 to 50 times the number of words.
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When the discussion gets more precise and more detailed, we have to move to specialized formal languages to make real progress -- logic, mathematics, formal languages.

Consider trying to work with the details of quantum physics without calculus and tensors.
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I run into the situation at work that people don't realize that the specification documents that we work on need to be as precise (unambiguous, correct, complete) as the code they are trying to specify, just at a different level of detail.
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The hypothesis that language shapes thought has always been obvious to me, but then I don't know the formal statement of the Sapir/Whorf hypothesis. There is clearly an issue of degree in that language rarely makes it impossible to think about things, but it can certainly facilitate or hinder the ability to manipulate symbols and the concepts to which they refer.

Thanks,
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Sincerely,

Dynamic Alternatives

Garold (Gary) L. Johnson
dynalt@dynalt.com
http://www.dynalt.com/