1.3 Structure of the mother tongue – Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
Sapir and Whorf didn’t assert that speakers of different languages can’t understand each other or that translation between different languages can’t be perfect. They assumed a linguistic relativity to be in a weak position.
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis：The structure of the mother tongue has an influence on the thought independent of language, in particular human cognitive ability.
The common interpretation of the hypothesis takes the position that language has an influence on thought in no small part. In fact, language has an influence on any thought, but what is it? The problem of thought is the higher cognitive ability concerning how to perceive the object and how to judge.
At first, American linguists insisted on phonological research and they studied phonology and syntax very hard. Linguistic theories that were individually dealt with in the 1970s were amalgamated step by step. The computer was developed from the 1980s onwards and therefore most researchers experimented with new approaches. In the field of linguistics, GPSG (Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar) (1985) and HPSG (Head Driven Phrase Structure Grammar) (1994), which combined generative grammar with logical grammar, are essentially that. Furthermore research that applied such linguistic theories to literature was gradually developed. (Mizutani 1998, Hanamura 2005) They are an attempt to consider human cognitive ability.
花村嘉英（2015）「从认知语言学的角度浅析鲁迅作品－魯迅をシナジーで読む」より translated by Yoshihisa Hanamura