Language is an ability common to all human beings. However, when there are 6,500 different languages, humanity is divided culturally and mentally. Experts who focus on language have pondered the extent of this gap and proposed that the existence of different languages is bound to shape thoughts. They also concluded that people speaking different languages could never understand each other's worldview. Two anthropologists have proposed the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that the language you unconsciously speak actually shapes the way you think about the world. This was later theorized as linguistic relativity which affirms the determination of the world. Two great examples of this topic are based on the Piraha and Mandarin cultures. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The first study was based on the Piraha language and culture. The Piraha are a small tribe living in the Amazon rainforest of Brazil. This tribe has shown the world several unique characteristics such as: no numbers, no color terms, no kinship beyond a single parent or first sibling, no religion, no collective memory and no art. The Piraha show no evidence of recursion in their language. This means that they do not have the ability to combine an infinite number of ideas into a single sentence. In 2002 Noam Chomsky proposed that recursion was the basis of all human language. A key component of his theory was universal grammar which was the most influential idea in linguistics at the time. Universal grammar holds that the structure of language (grammar) is found innately in the human genome, which is something a human being is born with rather than learned. According to Chomsky, he had proposed that all human languages, regardless of their superficial differences, share a common deep structure known as universal grammar. This powerful idea has dominated linguistics for more than 50 years. However, Daniel Everett, a missionary, who had a very close relationship with the Piraha and had learned their language, had questioned Chomsky's proposal. Everett argued that Chomsky's proposal was not true. Everett proposed that the Piraha language was not based on recursion, meaning that if Pitaha lacked recursion, recursion could not be the basis of all human language. At the time, Everett knew that if his claim were proven true, many would believe that the universal case for grammar would be seriously undermined. To turn his proposal into a scientific method, Everett brought recordings of the Piraha language to MIT. The process by which the recording would be done would test them through a computer language applications system which would help determine recursion which would then provide quantifiable proof. After three months of language evaluation, MIT had analyzed that there was no clear evidence of evidence of recursive structures. They also presented that no linguistic structures such as conjunctions were found in the Piraha language (there is no "and" or "or"). This study helped show the world how a small tribe completely uninterested in the outside world got an inside look at the human cognitive influence of other cultures. This study also presented how culture can influence not only the words of a language but the entire language itself. The second study builds on another area where the language differs radically in its use of logical terms. Relative linguistics holds that members of different language groups can differ in their.
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