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From: David E. Weldon, Ph.D. <David.E.Weldon@DaytonOH.ATTGIS.COM>
Subject: Re: In defense of Whorf
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Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 22:08:50 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai:29222 comp.ai.alife:3114 comp.ai.philosophy:27095


}==========Marko Toivanen, 4/19/95==========
}
}In a previous article (<3knup7$ctc@mp.cs.niu.edu>) of 21 Mar 
}1995 19:33:27
}-0600, Neil Rickert (rickert@cs.niu.edu) wrote to 
}comp.ai.philosophy: 
}
}* In <347@musis.Login> bdeschenes@musis.Login (Bruno 
}Deschenes) writes:
}* >In article <3kj5j9$63j@vent.pipex.net>, JohnatAcadInt 
}(ah63@solo.pipex.com) writes:
}* >>bossed@ERE.UMontreal.CA (Bosse Dominique) wrote:
}
}* >>> About the so-called discredit of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, 
}one has to
}* >>> keep in mind that when Chomsky established his totalitarian 
}rule over
}* >>> North-American linguistics ...
}
}* >The situation between Chomsky and Sapir-Whorf sounds a bit 
}similar
}* >to the one between Newton with his particle theory of light and
}* >Huygens with his wave theory of light. Who won? The one with 
}the
}* >most political power? Could it be the same with Chomsky?
}
I think you've seriously telescoped history here.  The Whorf hypothesis was
presented and debated several years before Chomsky wrote his seminal paper. 
By the time Chomsky wrote the paper, the Whorf hypothesis was an interesting
idea from sociology that did not appear to be acceptable or correct in the
halls of academic psychology.  In any case, Chomsky's paper was a critique of
B. F. Skinner's Radical Behaviorism.  In 1962, Skinner published a book called
Verbal Behavior in which he tried to show that language learning was due
solely to social and physical reinforcement from the child's parents and the
social community.  Chomsky's critique literally destroyed Radical Behaviorism
as a serious theory of human learning in general and language in particular. 
The Whorf hypothesis was not even part of the debate.

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