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.
The mechanism of perception and memory isn’t also determined only by language. Which memory is accumulated easily and how is each memory combined with each other? When one thinks about it, she can see the difference in each community. Generally one can process information by applying the reasoning to known information and by categorizing unknown information.
　The categorization to process unknown information differs according to the structure of mother tongue. There is a difference in the categorization of color expression between Chinese and Japanese. For example let’s think about Chinese corresponding to Japanese “blue”. Chinese uses “lán” to describe the color of sky or see as “lántian” or “lánsè de dahai”. Green light and plant are expressed as “lüdeng” and “lüyè”. On the other hand there is the expression that uses “blue” in the same way as Japanese. For example “qingma”, “qingcai”. This is to say, Chinese color expression are more concrete and versatile than Japanese.
　One should adopt the habitual thought for daily living and the idea of dynamic language and thought to redefine Sapir-Whorf hypothesis from the modern standpoint of view. In fact, it is appropriate from my own experience to consider that the custom of speech act has an influence on the cultural and social cognition by expanding the meaning of thought.

花村嘉英著（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