Language and Thought

(An insight through Hindi) SE 367 Introduction to Cognitive Science Course Project Sumit Verma Mentor – Dr. Amitabha Mukerjee, Dr. Achla M Raina

The Basics

 Whorfianism  Differences can be due to :  Semantic/Structure  View of the abstract world

Part A – Structure of a Language



Background

Hindi (SOV) v/s English (SVO) 

Experiment

 Procedure  Participants 8 Mess/Hall Workers (Hindi Speakers) and 21 X 2 Amazon Mechanical Turk HIT’s (English Speakers)

Results

American English Speakers Indian Hindi Speakers

Part B – Grammatical Gender in Language

बारिश 

Background

(Bihari Hindi v/s Standard UP/MP Hindi)  Bihari Hindi – Inanimate objects treated as Masculine  Standard Hindi – Gender of the object depends on a set of rules Examples:- Baarish ho rha hai and Baarish ho rhi hai 

Experiment

 Procedure  Participants – 10 1 st Year IITK students from Bihar + 10 IITK students from UP/MP/Delhi

चाबी

Results

Bihari Hindi Speakers Standard Hindi Speakers (UP/MP)

References

•      http://edge.org/3rd_culture/boroditsky09/boroditsky09_index.html

Linguistic Relativity – Lera Boroditsky (Galley – Article 00567) The Linguistic Survey of India, vol. v. part ii. (1903) Boroditsky, L., Schmidt, L., & Phillips, W. (2003). Sex, Syntax, and Semantics. In Gentner & Goldin-Meadow (Eds.,) Language in Mind: Advances in the study of Language and Cognition.

Semantic structure in improvised communication, (CogSci2011) Marieke Schouwstra, et. al (Anouschka van Leeuwen, Nicky Marien, Marianne Smit, Henri � ette de Swart)

Thank You!!!!