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[fqllve]

Oh, the whole agency thing. I've read about this before somewhere. It's kind of bunk, English can easily created non-agentive or elliptical agentive clauses.

"The glass broke."
"The glass was shattered."

Neither of those have a true agent (although the case can be made that in the first the glass functions as a sort of agent).

It is pretty much impossible to say that any language is one thing. English is primarily SVO, but it does show some ergative features, and it is possible to construct perfectly intelligible sentences that don't conform to that word order.

[RedKing]

I think there's a lot of variables involved there that can't be isolated from each other easily. Culture is as important as language, and culture informs and shapes language. The example with Indonesian lack of time-markers (I'm assuming the language was Bahasa Indoneisan) is interesting, but it begs the question: do they lack time recognition because they don't use time-words, or do they lack time-words because they lack recognition? There are a number of Native American languages which have only vague words for time-markers, and their associated cultures do not regard time and punctuality in the same regard as Western culture. But does A cause B, or B cause A, or are they (most likely) interrelated. There's also a certain amount of ethnocentrist assumptions inherent in the question. Inuit researchers might well ask, "Do English speakers fail to recognize differences in the types of snow because they only have one word for it, or do they only have one word because they don't see the differences?"

A more telling experiment would be to compare English speakers from different cultures where English is the primary language (say, the US, Liberia, Australia and Scotland) and look for differences of perception. In that case, the differences are not linguistically derived, but cultural.

And of course, the old Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and "color naming" research dates back to the 1950s. And the framing research with the Super Bowl bit...that's not linguistics, it's classic social science. Political scientists have known this forever.

[Solifuge]

This is an extremely interesting subject, to me. I personally feel that, not only does our language shape much of how we think of things, but I would go so far as to say that Language is How and Why we can think. It forms the tools by which we can hold internal dialogues, decide our course of actions, and so on.

A short episode of Radiolab covered the theoretical connection between thought and language, as proposed by Charles Fernyhough and Lev Vygotsky. Really cool stuff!

[Angel Of Death]

Only jerks ride armour plated kangaroos. They are bad for the environment.

We in West Australia ride the new Koala models, which are much more environment-friendly. A little slow though, but it's easier to aim your boomerang even if you're drunk silly.

I ride a kangaroo with cybernetic legs, armour plates and an minigun on the side. Yeah, sure, the cops want to take it away, but since I can jump 12.5 kilometers in the air and fire enough rounds to blow up an armoured helicopter they are going to have a hard time trying. Oh, it's the Hybrid edition, too.

[Mindmaker]

Would you drop it already?
This has been enough off topic for now.

[RedKing]

This is an extremely interesting subject, to me. I personally feel that, not only does our language shape much of how we think of things, but I would go so far as to say that Language is How and Why we can think. It forms the tools by which we can hold internal dialogues, decide our course of actions, and so on.

A short episode of Radiolab covered the theoretical connection between thought and language, as proposed by Charles Fernyhough and Lev Vygotsky. Really cool stuff!

So...someone born and raised in solitude (let's say a hypothetical Tarzan or Mowgli) would be incapable of thought? Furthermore, infants are more than capable of thought long before their language comprehension kicks in. Hell, lab rats can think. Maybe not higher reasoning, but enough to figure out puzzles and mazes. I'm not saying that it doesn't play a role, but it's one of interrelation rather than causation.

[ChairmanPoo]

In this context "thought" refers exclusively to abstract thought, as such those don't qualify as "thinking".

[RedKing]

Fair enough with regards to animals, but I still don't agree about infant humans. Babies develop the concept of object persistence (i.e. understanding that when a toy is hidden behind another object, it's still there; or, that when Mommy leaves their field of vision, she still exists) long before they develop language skills. That's abstract thought.

[Euld]

Oh, the whole agency thing. I've read about this before somewhere. It's kind of bunk, English can easily created non-agentive or elliptical agentive clauses.

"The glass broke."
"The glass was shattered."

Neither of those have a true agent (although the case can be made that in the first the glass functions as a sort of agent).

Yes it's possible to make those phrases in English but they sound very disjointed.  Imagine if you walked by a window, then it suddenly shatters without warning, and when someone asks you about it and you say "the glass broke" they will look at you funny because they want to know your role in the event.  In fact, not mentioning your role makes them wonder if you did it.

On a different note, Helen Keller.  She was blind and deaf since infancy, but eventually she was taught sign language (it was very difficult, naturally) and it turned out she was extremely intelligent.  So, no I'd say that not knowing a language doesn't affect intelligence.

[Vector]

Probably.  I'm the only English-speaker I know who says "the way it's supposed to be" ("comme il faut") and doesn't mean it in a "as God ordained it" way or an "as I was promised/deserve" way, but in terms of aesthetic principles that reflect an internal concept.  That's definitely a French thing.

I'm having trouble explaining the specific difference between the concepts, here, but I think the French version of the phrase refers to an aesthetic ideal accepted by a group, rather than anything attached to personal reward or personal desire.

I'm not sure if I'm plugged into the right idea here, but I suspect that my experience with French has left me far more sensitive to aestheticism in general than most English-speakers are.

[thobal]

wasnt there a cracked article on this very topic some weeks ago?

http://www.cracked.com/article_18823_5-insane-ways-words-can-control-your-mind.html

[Vector]

Oh, and in French you say that someone "has incorrectness" rather than "is wrong."  Same thing for "has correctness" vs. "is right."  I occasionally suspect that has something to do with my arguing style.

[eerr]

http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2010/mayjun/features/boroditsky.html

It very well could.  A friend posted this on Facebook, and considering the number of people who are multilingual here, I'm curious if anyone has noticed language affecting how people observe events around them.

Languague absolutely does affect how people act.

[fqllve]

Yes it's possible to make those phrases in English but they sound very disjointed.  Imagine if you walked by a window, then it suddenly shatters without warning, and when someone asks you about it and you say "the glass broke" they will look at you funny because they want to know your role in the event.  In fact, not mentioning your role makes them wonder if you did it.

No. The unaccusative verb is common in English. And the passive routinely drops the agent. Actually, that's the most common criticism of the passive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unaccusative_verb#Unaccusativity_in_English

[chaoticag]

This looks like a bad study to me. There is a world of difference between how English people think, and how Aborigines would, but whether this is due to language is not made any clearer by the study, simply because she didn't bother considering whether culture influences thought. Really, a better way of testing this would be to find people who learned english as a second language, and compare them to see if they think any differently from those who didn't learn it. It still isn't a great way to make a study, but the results would be more convincing.