Are the limits of the human mind defined only by the language one speaks? Can we see a
color that has no name?
Following the rise of the positivist perspective, which argued that there are objects in the
external world independent of language and mind, and that language is a phenomenon serving
as a mirror to reflect these objects, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis—influenced by the ideas of
Humboldt—disrupted this positivist viewpoint.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is a theory explaining the relationship between language and
thought, shaped in the early 20th century by American linguist and anthropologist Edward
Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf. The hypothesis claims that the structure of a language and its
words are phenomena that influence and shape a person’s worldview, perception of it, and
mind (Gee, 2014, as cited in Natsir et al., 2025). In light of these ideas, two distinct
perspectives emerged from the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: strong and weak. The weak version
is Linguistic Relativity, which argues that differences in language can cause changes in the
thoughts of its speakers, that language merely influences thought, and that individual and
cultural factors also play a role alongside language in shaping cognition (Natsir et al., 2025).
The strong version is Linguistic Determinism, which states that human cognition is entirely
determined by the categories and structures already existing in language (Ludlow, 2000, as
cited in Natsir et al., 2025).
Linguistic Relativity
Linguistic Relativity is centered around three main ideas:
- It assumes that languages can differ significantly in the meanings of their
words and syntactic constructions—an assumption that is strongly supported
by linguistic, anthropological, and psychological studies of word and phrasal
meaning across languages. - The proposal holds that the semantics of a language can affect the way in
which its speakers perceive and conceptualize the world, and in the extreme,
completely shape thought, a position known as linguistic determinism. - Language can affect thinking, linguistic relativity holds the speakers of
different languages think differently.” (Wolff & Holmes, 2011)
Linguistic Determinism
According to linguistic determinism, language determines thought down to its very
foundation; therefore, speakers of different languages think differently.
“In linguistic determinism, the shaping role of language is held to be so strong
that it can even overwrite pre-existing perceptual and conceptual capabilities,
in a manner analogous to the way infants lose the ability to notice phonetic
distinctions absent in their native language” (Werker & Tees, 1984, as cited in
Wolff & Holmes, 2011).
Background of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
The idea that language shapes thought was first proposed by German philosophers J. G.
Herder and W. von Humboldt. However, the figure who truly influenced linguists and the
philosophy of language was Humboldt.
“Man lives with his object chiefly, in fact, since his feeling and acting depend
on his representations, one might say solely, as the language conveys them to
him. By the same act by which he spins language out of himself, he spins
himself into it, and each language draws a circle about the people to whom it
belongs, which it is possible to step out of only by stepping into circle of
another.”(Humboldt,1968)
According to Humboldt, language influences thought and consequently human behavior;
therefore, speakers of different languages must have different worldviews (Fishman, 1972, as
cited in Natsir et al., 2025). These assertions by Humboldt passed through the anthropological
work of Franz Boas and reached Sapir and his student Whorf.
Sapir
According to Sapir, language and culture are inseparable; thus, one cannot be understood
without the other. He explains this view as follows:
“Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world
of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of
the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their
society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially
without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of
solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the
matter is that the ‘real world’ is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the
language habits of the group. We see and hear and otherwise experience very
largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose
certain choices of interpretation.” (Sapir, 1929)
Whorf
What truly shaped linguistic relativity was Whorf’s work on the Hopi language (an American
Indian language). In his initial study, he discovered that the grammar of Hopi contained
irregularities that could not be explained by conventional Indo-European standards, and he
realized that the language structures he found were vastly different from native languages.
Whorf suggested that such conditions could trigger different modes of thought, because in his
view, thought is expressed through language, and therefore linguistic structures influence
thought and perception (Whorf, 1946, as cited in Natsir et al., 2025).
These theoretical debates have been tested through empirical studies conducted particularly in
the fields of color perception and numerical cognition.
Research
Color
“The color domain has been of central interest in research on the relationship
between language and thought. Several studies show us that language could
have an effect on color cognition. Work with the Berinmo, a small tribe in
New Guinea whose language has 5 basic color terms (compared to 11 in
English), is a case in point. Controlling for a confound in previous research,
Roberson and colleagues found that the Berinmo’s recognition memory was
better for the focal colors of their own language than for those of English. In a
similar line of research, Winawer et al. found that an obligatory color
distinction in Russian between siniy (dark blue) and goluboy (light blue) led to
differences in color discrimination. Russian speakers, but not English speakers,
performed faster on a matching task when the colors belonged to different
linguistic categories than when they belonged to the same category.” (Wolff &
Holmes, 2011)
Number
“There appear to be three main systems for representing numerical quantities.
One of these systems involves a fast ‘subitizing’ procedure that allows
everyone from infants to adults to recognize small numbers of items
automatically without having to count. A second system allows animals,
infants, and adults to discriminate larger quantities, but only approximately,
such as the rough amount of sand in a bucket or fish in a net. These two
systems are thought to be innate. The third system allows for the specification
of exact quantities, such as the quantity 31. An exact number system must be
explicitly learned, and several sources of evidence suggest that this third
system depends on language.
In a study by Dehaene et al., Russian–English bilinguals were trained on exact
and approximate number addition in either Russian or English. After training,
performance on the exact addition problems was faster in the trained language
than in the untrained language, suggesting that the results of training were
stored in a language-specific format. Performance on the estimation problems,
in contrast, was unaffected by the language of training, suggesting the use of
mental codes that were independent of language. A functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI) study supported these results by showing that the
exact number task recruited neural networks typically associated with language
processing, whereas the estimation task recruited areas in both parietal lobes
not typically associated with language processing.
Number words in Pirahã, a language spoken by a small tribe in Brazilian
Amazonia, map only roughly onto the quantities ‘one’ and ‘two’. As observed
by Frank et al., the Pirahã’s word for one, hói (falling tone), may be used to
describe as many as 6 items, the word for two, hoí (rising tone), as many as 4–
10 items, and the word for many, baagi, between 7 and 10 items. Effectively,
then, Pirahã lacks words for exact quantities.
Gordon investigated the potential consequences of this absence of number
words on tasks requiring exact quantities. In one such task, Pirahã speakers
were asked to line up batteries on a table across from a set of nuts arranged in a
line. In a more difficult version of this task, they were asked to match the items
along an axis orthogonal to the one used by the experimenter. The main result
was that the Pirahã were unable to perform the task accurately, but their
responses were not random: as the number of items increased, the Pirahã
tended to put out more items, though rarely the exact number. The results
suggest that the Pirahã tried to solve the task using an approximate number
system. Gordon’s findings align well with Dehaene et al.’s study in indicating
that exact magnitude calculation requires language.” (Wolff & Holmes, 2011)
Conclusion
In conclusion, the relationship between language, thought, and perception does
not have strict and clear boundaries as suggested by linguistic determinism.
Studies on numbers, in particular, demonstrate that the absence of complex
number systems or color terms in a language does not significantly affect
native speakers’ perception of numbers and visual stimuli. While individuals
are capable of perceiving unnamed colors and complex number systems, they
may experience difficulty primarily in categorizing them and transferring them
into working memory. Thus, while the boundaries of the human mind are not
absolute prisoners of native vocabulary, language acts as a powerful cognitive
tool that systematically shapes, refines, and directs human perception and
reasoning across diverse cultures.
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