In a paper just published in Science, Peter Gordon of Columbia University uses his study o
f the Piraha and their counting system to try to answer a tricky linguistic question. The Piraha, a group of hunter-gatherers who live along the banks of the Maici River in Brazil, use a system of counting called "one-two-many". In this, the word for "one" translates to "roughly one" (similar to "one or two" in English), the word for "two" means "a slightly larger amount than one" (similar to "a few" in English), and the word for "many" means "a much larger amount".
This question was posed by Benjamin Lee Whorl in the 1930s. Whorl studied Hopi, an Amerindian language very different from the Eurasian languages that had hitherto been the subject of academic linguistics. His work led him to suggest that language not only influences thought but, more strongly, that it determines thought.
While there is no dispute that language influences what people think about, evidence suggesting it determines thought is inconclusive. For example, in 1972, Eleanor Rosch and Karl Heider investigated the colour-naming abilities of the Dani people of Indonesia. The Dani have words for only two colours: black and white. But Dr. Rosch and Dr. Heider found that, even so, Dani could distinguish and comprehend other colours. That does not support the deterministic version of the Whorf hypothesis.
While recognising that there are such things as colours for which you have no name is certainly a cognitive leap, it may not be a good test of Whorf's ideas. Colours, after all, are out there everywhere. Numbers, by contrast, are abstract, so may be a better test. Dr. Gordon therefore spent a month with the Piraha and elicited the help of seven of them to see how far their grasp of numbers extended.
The tests began simply, with a row of, say, seven evenly spaced batteries. Gradually, they got more complicated. The more complicated tests included tasks such as matching numbers of unevenly spaced objects, replicating the number of objects from memory, and copying a number of straight lines from a drawing.
In the tests that involved matching the number and layout of objects they could see, participants were pretty good when faced with two or three items, but found it harder to cope as the number of items rose. Things were worse when the participants had to remember the number of objects in a layout and replicate it "blind", rather than matching a layout they could see. In this case the success rate dropped to zero when the number of items became, in terms of their language, "many".
And line drawing produced the worst results of all—though that could have had as much to do with the fact that drawing is not part of Piraha culture as it did with the difficulties of numerical abstraction. Indeed, Dr. Gordon described the task of reproducing straight lines as being accomplished only with "heavy sighs and groans".
Which of the following is Not true according to the first two paragraphs？
A．Gordon's purpose in his study of the Piraha was to solve a language problem.
B．The Piraha would use the word "many" to describe the number "twenty".
C．Linguists had studied other languages before they switched to Hopi.
D．Whorl claimed that language did more than influence people's thought.
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