# Can a culture's primitive language structure retard human intelligence? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 30, 2006, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-cultures-primitive-language-structure-retard-human-intelligence/354849 "2006-04-30T17:14:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2006, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-cultures-primitive-language-structure-retard-human-intelligence/354849/1 "2006-04-30T17:14:38Z")
[I was reading this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=369449) and wondered if the effects of a primitive language structure can operationally retard human intelligence regardless of the innate intellectual capacity of the members of the tribe or cultural group? If you are never given the building blocks of abstract reasoning when young will your intellectual capacity and ability to think abstractly remain stunted forever? Based on the research referenced in that thread this seems not only possible, but probable. And before we get into the whole cultural relativism dialog about “what is intelligence”, I think we have to agree that thinking abstractly is a necessary component of defining human intellectual capacity and capability. If it’s not, then there’s no point to the question. The tribe members may be perfectly normal physically, but are severely limited in their capacity to grasp even the simplest abstract notions that lie outside their immediate frame of reference. Beyond this limitation the most stunning part is that even with repetitive tutoring adult members of the tribe _can’t learn_ abstract notions. Even 1+1 is a stumper after repeated lessons with rewards. That language structure can cause this level of intellectual limitaton is astounding to me. So the question is, can language make you stupid? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2006, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-cultures-primitive-language-structure-retard-human-intelligence/354849/2 "2006-04-30T18:12:14Z")
You seem to be stretching, perhaps to the snapping point, a line from the article liked to in that other thread. > [@](#): > > “The question is, is there any case where not having words for something doesn’t allow you to think about it?” Prof. Gordon asked about the Piraha and the Whorfian thesis. “I think this is a case for just that.” Not having words for some concepts is not at all the same thing as primitive language structure. Gordon says that the Piraha can do other things, of presumably far more importance to their lives, perfectly capably. If their language handles that, then why would you say it had a primitive structure? Talk about cultural relativism! In any case, the findings about the tribe need to be taken with a large grain of salt at this point. There are many examples in anthropology in which the earliest investigators made false assumptions about a tribe that needed to be corrected later on. I don’t find this persuasive evidence for Whorf and Chomsky. I don’t think that one, perhaps misapplied, data point says anything about language and its effects, either. ---
**Author:** ![Sattua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sattua/32/11906_2.png) [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2006, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-cultures-primitive-language-structure-retard-human-intelligence/354849/3 "2006-04-30T18:17:29Z")
My experience from teaching undergraduates at a Big 10 university is that a very small proportion of native English speakers have any abstract reasoning capacity, and I assume that you are assuming English is a “sophisticated” language. I do think you are barking up the wrong tree by talking about a primitive language structure. Invented languages like Esperanto, meant to be simple, might have a primitive structure; all natural languages are syntactically quite complex, however, just in different ways. I should also point out that a lot of so-called primitive cultures, for example those deep in the Amazon rainforest, have abstract thinking and have a lot of abstract concepts that are completely different from those familiar to the global community. Isn’t it our disadvantage not to have those concepts? Well, probably. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2006, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-cultures-primitive-language-structure-retard-human-intelligence/354849/4 "2006-04-30T18:47:56Z")
Primitive/simple/different you can can choose the term you like, the point is that it apparently permanently constrains the ability to reason abstractly. [The constructive limitations on the tribes abilities are discussed in the abstract below](http://ling.man.ac.uk/Info/staff/DE/culturalgrammar.pdf). Assuming the tribe members are inherently perfectly capable of being as cognitively accomplished as any other group of humans, I think the inability to count and conceptualize objects beyond your near term frame of reference speaks to a severely limiting aspect of this cultural grammar even if they can “get by” without more complex frames of reference. Your argument that the researcher is potentially mis-understanding “what’s really happening” almost requires a supposition that he made all his examples of non-abstracting ability that he discusses in detail. Please understand I’m not “dissing” this tribe as people. They do “get by” without history and counting, but the inability to learn to count in even the simplest context surely speaks to the incredible impact of language early in a human being development. > [@](#): > > ABSTRACT > The Pirahã language challenges simplistic application of Hockett’s (1960) nearly > universally-accepted ‘design features of human language’, by showing that some of these design features (interchangeability, displacement, and productivity) may be culturally constrained. In particular Pirahã culture constrains communication to non-abstract subjects which fall within the immediate experience of interlocutors. This constraint explains several very surprising features of Pirahã grammar and culture: the absence of creation myths and fiction; the simplest kinship system yet documented; the absence of numbers of any kind or a concept of counting; the absence of color terms; the absence of embedding in the grammar; the absence of ‘relative tenses’; the borrowing of its entire pronoun inventory from Tupi; the fact that the Pirahã are monolingual after more than 200 years of regular contact with Brazilians and the Tupi-Guarani-speaking Kawah ; the absence of any individual or collective memory of more than two generations past; the absence of drawing or other art and one of the simplest material cultures yet documented; the absence of any terms for quantification, .g. ‘all’, ‘each’, ‘every’, ‘most’, ‘some’, etc. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2006, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-cultures-primitive-language-structure-retard-human-intelligence/354849/5 "2006-04-30T18:50:38Z")
Reply was to Exapno Mapcase Correction > [@](#): > > almost requires a supposition that he made all his examples of almost requires a supposition that he made up all his examples of ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2006, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-cultures-primitive-language-structure-retard-human-intelligence/354849/6 "2006-04-30T19:16:24Z")
> [@astro](#): > > That language structure can cause this level of intellectual limitation is astounding to me. So the question is, can language make you stupid? Yes, in a way. But it works both ways. Most hunter-gatherer societies have words for each and every tiny species that lives in their area and can tell you a great deal about their habits, etc. But these words are being lost as these societies blend in to the surrounding culture. We know that Native Hawaiians had X amount of words for different fish, but science has only discovered a smaller Y amount of fish and often can’t tell the difference between two fish that any culture that has lived around them could easily tell. Our language has made us dumb. I read once of a community of rice farmers who used several concurrently running but different calendars. People skilled in using these calenders advised on when to plant and when to irrigate, even though the calendar readers had no special knowledge of why it works best to space farming tasks that particular way. When the Western calendar was adopted, famine was introduced because people lost the ability to space the irrigation and fallow periods correctly. Their understanding of their land was encoded in their language (via calender) and they lost that. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2006, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-cultures-primitive-language-structure-retard-human-intelligence/354849/7 "2006-04-30T19:24:45Z")
> [@astro](#): > > That language structure can cause this level of intellectual limitaton is astounding to me. So the question is, can language make you stupid? Yes, if you lock someone in a closet from birth and don’t let him develop any language capability. No, if you’re talking about a functioning human society, even one as small as the Piraha. I don’t accept that the tribe in question lacks the ability to reason abstractly. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2006, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-cultures-primitive-language-structure-retard-human-intelligence/354849/8 "2006-04-30T19:36:47Z")
The claims about the Piriha language are dubious. For one thing, only two non-members of the tribe speak the language at the moment with any fluency. When a dozen linguists have learned to speak Piriha with fluency, they will be able to verify or contradict the claims about this language and about this community. The other thing is that many, many “primitive” languages have been studied. No linguist has ever found any consistent relationship between the grammatical and semantic structure of the language and the amount of “culture” that the speakers of the language display. Often a group considered to be very “primitive” (in the sense of being isolated from what we think of as “civilization”) has extremely complex grammar and an extremely complex set of mythologies and native thought-patterns. They all think “abstractly”. The fact that their abstractions are different from our abstractions doesn’t make them less abstract thinkers than us. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2006, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-cultures-primitive-language-structure-retard-human-intelligence/354849/9 "2006-04-30T21:28:29Z")
> [@astro](#): > > Your argument that the researcher is potentially mis-understanding “what’s really happening” almost requires a supposition that he made [up] all his examples of non-abstracting ability that he discusses in detail. Not at all. It is unfortunately common that the original researchers do not understand a culture they encounter. One example that comes to mind was one in which a culture was entirely misinterpreted simply because the anthropologists were male and could speak only to males, but when female anthropologists came along they discovered that the woman had a wildly variant language and social structure. No primitive language has ever been found, anywhere, by anyone. Perhaps this is the amazing exception. It’s more likely, however, that we still don’t know enough about the Piraha to say anything of meaning. I haven’t read the entire paper you linked to, but you may want to take note of Appendix Three, in which even a friendly commenter casts doubts on the validity of Gordon’s conclusions, and, more importantly, whether the testing itself may have introduced the very biases Gordon takes to be features of the culture. As with most breakthrough papers, this one will be minutely scrutinized and torn apart by friends and foes alike. Many in a few years time we’ll be able to say whether it means something or not. Until then, not proven is the safest - and kindest - comment to make.