Study links words, concepts

Does language sometimes define the content of thought? Are there people who cannot entertain certain ideas because their language does not have the words to express them? Are there concepts that cannot be translated into some languages?

These questions have vexed linguists and neuroscientists for years. The general feeling has been that language does not limit cognition. However, a new study in the online version of Science suggests that the prevailing notion might not be correct.

Peter Gordon, a behavioral scientist at Columbia University, conducted an unusual set of experiments with seven adults of the 200-member Piraha tribe of Amazonian Indians in Brazil.

The tribe’s counting system consists of three words – one that means “roughly one,” one that means “a small quantity” and one that means “many.”

Gordon asked the Piraha subjects to perform various tasks in which performance would be greatly enhanced by the ability to count. These included laying out the same number of nuts or sticks that he had laid out; distinguishing two boxes whose only difference was the number of fish drawn on their tops; and knowing when a tin can was empty after watching the researcher put nuts into the can and then withdraw them.

Gordon found the Piraha were incapable of following or accounting for more than three objects. He attributed this finding to the fact the Piraha “have no privileged name for the singular quantity” – in other words, no one, no notion of an integer.