on ‘radically’ different conceptual schemesassuming that there are different conceptual schemes,...

On ‘Radically’ Different Conceptual Schemes

Prototypes and Boundaries in Color Terms and Number Marking 1

Lajos L. Brons ([email protected] / [email protected])Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Letters, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan

abstractAssuming that there are different conceptual schemes, the differences between those can be conceived in a

number of ways. Davidson, for example, understood difference between schemes as radical non-inter-translatability, which is impossible, but his interpretation seems far removed from the intentions of (most of) the scheme theorists. In this paper, I suggest an alternative conceptualization of radical difference in terms of prototypes and boundaries of concepts, and explore differences between prototypes and boundaries within the domains of color terms and number marking. However, no evidence for ‘radical’ difference thus understood is found. Because there does not seem to be another obvious option for a formal criterion of ‘radical’ difference between schemes, we may have to give up that idea, and focus on ‘subtle’ differences instead.

1 — introduct ion

Within numerous scientific fields and philosophical currents it has been suggested that the categories embedded in our languages influence or even determine how we make sense of the world. Variants of this idea can be found in, among others, Nietzsche’s perspectivism, Marx and Engels’s notions of ideology and consciousness, the Sapir-Whorf thesis, Gadamer’s horizons, Goffman’s frames, Kuhn’s paradigms, Foucault’s discourses and épistèmes, and variants or elements of social constructionism. Moreover, the basic idea is not exclusive to relatively recent (and) Western philosophy – related ideas can be found in, for example, Heraclitus and in Buddhist philosophical thought as well. (See Brons 2009 for a more extensive overview and comparison.)

Despite the apparent ubiquity of variants of the idea, and its frequent confirmation in inter-cultural communication, it has been under attack from various directions since the latter decades of

1 Working paper — draft version: v1.2 (August 13, 2009). Please do not quote. This and other working papers are available at www.lc.dds.nl/wp.

ON ‘RADICALLY ’ D IFFERENT CONCEPTUAL SCHEMES 2

the 20th century. Most famous is Davidson’s rebuttal of his rather specific interpretation of the idea in ‘on the very idea of a conceptual scheme’ (1974). He took the term ‘conceptual scheme’ from Quine (1960), but it was probably Nietzsche who used it first (in his Homer und die klassische Philologie, written in 1869). However, we will mostly ignore Davidson’s objections here, assuming that there are conceptual schemes indeed, to focus on the nature of the (types of) differences between schemes.

Scheme theories (at least those mentioned) are primarily theories of interpretation (and/or perception). However, while most of the scheme theorists applied their scheme-like notion to explain interpretation (or perception) within a scheme, Whorf, Gadamer, and Kuhn also discussed interpretation across schemes, and it is in such interpretation that the difference between schemes becomes important. Certain kinds of differences between schemes may make them ‘incommensurable’ (Kuhn 1962) or ‘uncalibratable’ (Whorf 1956), while other differences cause only (relatively) minor problems in inter-linguistic communication. If we call the former differences ‘radical’ and the latter ‘subtle’, an obvious pair of questions would be the following: What would make a difference between conceptual schemes a ‘radical difference’; and are there radical differences indeed? The first of these is a theoretical or philosophical question; the second is empirical, and is largely dependent on the first. For that reason, while I intend to provide some answers to both questions in this paper, I will start with the first.

2 — the nature of ‘ radical ’ difference

Neither Kuhn, nor Whorf, provided an explicit or formal criterion that makes two conceptual schemes ‘radically’ different. Kuhn’s ‘incommensurability’ and Whorf’s ‘uncalibratability’ are more metaphorical than formal notions, but both are related to forms of non-inter-translatability, and it is this idea that was picked up by Davidson (1974). However, Davidson made use of a very formal interpretation of ‘translation’ as providing a language fragment with identical truth conditions in another language, and asserted that such translation is always possible because all languages are ultimately grounded in the same reality (see also Brons 2009). While Davidson made a valid point, and it may in principle always be possible to provide a language fragment in L1 that has identical truth values to a language fragment in L2 indeed, it is doubtful that such an interpretation comes close to what Kuhn and/or Whorf had in mind. Davidsonian ‘translations’ may be long, complex, and hideously convoluted if there are substantial differences in categorization or individuation between L1 and L2, and it is much more plausible that that is what Whorf and Kuhn meant with ‘incalibratibility’ or ‘incommensurability’.

Whorf (1956) gave a number of different examples of differences between conceptual schemes that may shed some light on the issue. Compare, for example, the following two cases:

(1) Empty gasoline drums (p. 135) — Consider a storage of ‘empty’ gasoline drums. Some, possibly many, people will interpret ‘empty’ as containing nothing, and therefore, assume this storage to be safe. Others, such as people who – like Whorf himself – occupy themselves with fire prevention inspection, may think of ‘empty’ as meaning ‘does not contain gasoline


anymore, but will probably still contain highly explosive gasoline vapor’ (or something similar), and will consider the storage very dangerous.

(2) An invitation to a feast (p. 243) — The Nootka one-word sentence ‘Tl’imshya’isita’itlma’ (N) can be crudely translated into either ‘He invites people to a feast’ (E1) or ‘Boil - ed - eat - ers - go-for - he does’ (E2). However, while both E1 and E2 could be regarded ‘translations’ of N, neither captures the meaning of N exactly. E2 comes close, but can hardly be regarded as a translation into English; while E1 can hardly be regarded as expressing the same thing.

There is a certain analogy between the concept of ‘empty’ in the first of these two cases and the difference in interpretation of ‘translation’ between Davidson and the scheme theorists. Different speakers of the same language use the same term, assuming similarity in interpretation, but actually interpret it differently. The second case illustrates the different interpretations of the concept of ‘translation’. In Davidson’s interpretation, a ‘translation’ of the Nootka sentence (N) would be a version of E1 with some subclauses and/or explanatory notes to assure the exact same truth conditions as N. Whorf, on the other hand, and presumably Kuhn as well, would not accept either E1 or E2 as a translation for the reasons mentioned, and therefore, has to conclude that N is non-translatable into English and, conversely, that E1 is non-translatable into Nootka.

An important difference between Whorf and Kuhn on the one hand, and Davidson on the other, is in the objects of translation. In case of Davidson such objects can only be sentences (or other text fragments) that have truth conditions, while Whorf and Kuhn focus on much smaller components of language: words or concepts, and the way these are sewn together. E1 then, cannot be a translation of N (or vice versa), because the concepts used in these two sentences, and the ways they are used, are very different.

A difference between conceptual schemes, however, is not a mere difference between languages, but a difference between the ways of perceiving or making sense of the world embedded in conceptual categories (that may be part of natural languages, scientific theories, or any other ‘system’ of conceptual categorization). It is a difference in the categories of perception and thought rather than a mere linguistic difference. Case 1 shows such a difference between two schemes that both make use of the English language. Whether there is such a difference in case 2 is not immediately clear. That Nootka and English seem much more different than two version of English differing only in their definition of ‘empty’ is irrelevant, it is difference in the categories of perception and thought that matters.

If we assume that speakers of Nootka do indeed perceive the world differently, and that this difference is related to or or even caused by the differences between the English and Nootka sentences in case 2, then we would have examples of two very different cases of differing conceptual schemes. In case 1, the difference is in the interpretation (or definition) of an apparently similar concept. In case 2, there seem to be no similar concepts. Furthermore, in case 1 the difference is purely conceptual, while in case 2 there is a grammatical difference as well (although possibly the two types of difference are not always easily distinguished).

If we ignore grammatical difference for now, the issue boils down to conceptual identity and difference: What counts as having the same, or a similar concept; what as a ‘subtly’ different concept, and what would be ‘radically’ different? ‘Feast’ and ‘tl’imshya’ (something that is the result of boiling) are obviously very different in any respect except that they perform more or less


equivalent roles in the two sentences. ‘People at/to a feast’ and ‘tl’imshya’isita’ (eaters of something that is the result of boiling) are considerably more similar, but still hardly the same concept. ‘Empty’-1 and ‘empty’-2 in the case of the empty gasoline drums, are quite obviously not the same either, being similar only in their term or label.

The latter case shows quite clearly that it is not the term or label that matters for similarity or difference in cross-scheme translation or interpretation, but (something like) the meaning or reference of concepts. There is an abundance of theories about concepts and meaning. Laurence and Margolis (1999), for example, distinguish classical theory, prototype theory, theory theory, atomism and a number of variations and combinations thereof. However, most of these can only accommodate for one type of identity and difference – a dichotomous, absolute identity and difference. The main exception if prototype theory.

Prototype theory (e.g. Rosch 1973, Medin & Smith 1985) emerged from psychological research on concept use, and has been subject to extensive empirical scrutiny leading to some adaptation and variation (such as exemplar theory). The core idea, however, has stood up rather well. According to prototype theory, children develop concepts as referents pointing at unique natural objects, prototypes, rather than as abstract objects determined by descriptions or definitions (Millikan 1998), and it is the ever changing set of these prototypes (or exemplars) that determines the applicability of our concepts. Many – if not all – common concepts have one or more prototypes at their core and a gray area of less typical instantiations around that. This gray area has an outer boundary, although that boundary may be fuzzy.

If we call the set of prototypes P and the gray area, the full extension of the concept, E (such that P is a subset of E), then we can formally distinguish the following types of difference and identity between two concepts C1 and C2:(1) EC1∩EC2=Ø ;(2) EC1∩EC2≠Ø and PC1∩PC2=Ø ;(3) EC1∩EC2≠Ø and PC1∩PC2≠Ø ;(4) EC1∩EC2≠Ø and PC1=PC2 ;(5) EC1=EC2 and PC1∩PC2=Ø ;(6) EC1=EC2 and PC1∩PC2≠Ø ;(7) EC1=EC2 and PC1=PC2 .

Quite obviously, (1) and (7) are absolute difference and absolute identity respectively. While (1) is common, (7) is relatively rare, even within the same natural language, and even in a comparison of the same word in the vocabulary of the same speaker at two points in time. The fact that P is slightly different for every user of a concept and changes continuously and quite fast (Barsalou 1987) further complicates things. It seems that P does not have a hard boundary, but is a fuzzy set with continuously changing membership degrees of many of its members, and the same may be the case (although possibly to a lesser extent) for E. In aggregating the Ps and Es of the individual users sharing a concept within a linguistic community (a ‘language game’), clearer distinctions between P, E\P (E minus P), and not-E may appear. But still, because of prototype change, absolute difference and identity between Ps and Es, as in most of the types of difference or identity formally distinguished above, would not be feasible, and we have to settle for ‘mostly identical’ and ‘significantly different’ (which would strictly speaking both be variants of ...C1∩...C2=Ø), leaving the exact interpretation of both for later concern. This results in four options:(a) EC1 and EC2 are significantly different, and PC1 and PC2 are significantly different.


(b) EC1 and EC2 are significantly different, but PC1 and PC2 are mostly identical.(c) EC1 and EC2 are mostly identical, but PC1 and PC2 are significantly different.(d) EC1 and EC2 are mostly identical, and PC1 and PC2 are mostly identical.

Of these four possibilities (a) and (d) are rather straightforward. In case of (a), C1 and C2 are very different concepts, and in case of (d), they are (more or less) the same. In case of (b) and (c), C1 and C2 are neither identical, nor completely different. However, if applicability of a concept is determined by P, then we should prioritize difference or identity of P over difference or identity of E. Since P is mostly identical in case of (b), the difference between C1 and C2 is considerably more ‘subtle’ here than in case of (a) or (c). Furthermore, since P determines applicability of a concept, and therefore, E is at least partially determined by P, (c) is a rather unlikely case. If (b) is a subtle difference between concepts, (a) and (c) may be conceived as radical difference, leading to the following definitions:

definition 1: Two concepts C1 and C2 are radically different if PC1 and PC2 are significantly different.

definition 2: Two concepts C1 and C2 are subtly different if PC1 and PC2 are mostly identical, but EC1 and EC2 are significantly different.

definition 3: Two concepts C1 and C2 are similar if PC1 and PC2 are mostly identical and EC1 and EC2 are mostly identical.

‘Feast’ and ‘tl’imshya’ (the invitation to a feast case) are radically different concepts, but so are ‘hat’ and ‘baseball bat’. Furthermore, so are ‘empty’-1 and ‘empty’-2 (the empty gasoline drums case), since these two concepts too involve different prototypical notions, and so do Davidson’s ‘translation’ on the one hand and Kuhn’s ‘incommensurability’ and Whorf’s ‘uncalibratability’ on the other. An example of two subtly different concepts might be English ‘animal’ and Japanese 動物 (doubutsu), the difference being that the English concept includes bugs (in E, but generally not in P), while the Japanese does not.

Based on these definitions, we can now define radically different conceptual schemes:

definition 4: Two conceptual schemes CS1 and CS2 are radically different if there is a substantial number of concepts in CS1 for which there is no similar or subtly different concept in CS2.

Conversely, two conceptual schemes CS1 and CS2 are (more or less) identical if for any concept in CS1 there is a recognized similar concept in CS2. It is important that the similar concept is recognized as such, because the mere existence of that similar concept is insufficient for accurate cross-scheme interpretation. The two conceptual schemes in the case of the empty gasoline drums above are not radically different, because both conceptual schemes – most likely – contain both ‘empty’-1 and ‘empty’-2. They are not identical either because ‘empty’-1 in CS1 is falsely assumed to be the same as ‘empty’-2 in CS2. In other words, there is no recognized similar concept, but a radically different concept is assumed to be similar instead. The difference between Davidson’s conceptual scheme and Whorf’s or Kuhn’s (with regards to ‘translation’ and related concepts) is of a similar nature. Consequently, if conceptual schemes that are nor radically different, nor identical, are called ‘subtly different’, then there are two kinds of subtle differences between conceptual schemes. One is a subtle difference between concepts in the sense of


definition 2, the other is a confusion of seemingly similar concepts as in the case of the empty gasoline drums or in much of the debate about conceptual schemes (see also Brons 2009).

Returning to the terminology of prototype theory, a difference in prototypes (def. 1) would be a radical difference between concepts, while a mere difference in boundaries (def. 2) would be a subtle difference; and radically different conceptual schemes would have a substantial number of radically different concepts (in a relevant context – def. 4). (Grammatical difference does not in an obvious way fit into this classification of types of differences between conceptual schemes and has been ignored thus far. We will, however, return to the issue of grammatical difference in the following section.) Theoretically such radical difference is possible, but to assess whether this interpretation of ‘radical difference’ is (theoretically) productive mere possibility is insufficient. If there is no evidence that there actually is such difference, there still is no good reason to assume the existence of radically different conceptual schemes. Therefore, we now shift our focus from the theoretical and philosophical to the empirical.

3 — empir ical explorat ions of d ifference

Of the many conceptual scheme theories only the Sapir-Whorf thesis, the idea that the categories embodied in natural languages strongly influence people’s perception of the world, has inspired some (but not much) research that transcends the anecdotal or mere rhetorical or theoretical. For most of its ‘life’, the Sapir-Whorf thesis has been debated more than researched (e.g. Lucy 1992a), but since the early 1990s there is a growing body of empirical research addressing the issue.

Lucy (1997a) distinguishes three types of (or approaches to) empirical research on the Sapir-Whorf thesis: structure-centered, domain-centered, and behavior-centered approaches. Structure-centered approaches seek for evidence of influence on thought of observed differences in the structure of language. Examples include Whorf’s own work on marking time in Hopi, and number marking in Yucatec Maya and Japanese. Domain-centered approaches try to determine whether specific domains of human experience are classified, individuated, or encoded differently in different languages. The best known example is that of color terms, but there has also been some research done on spatial orientation. Behavior-centered approaches try to explain observed differences in behavior by linguistic differences. The examples Lucy gives are too specific and too anecdotal to repeat in abbreviated form here. Moreover, because of underdetermination of theory by data, this last approach seems fundamentally flawed.

Of the two main domain-centered approaches, color terms and spatial orientation, color terms seems to be the most interesting research field here because color terms individuate bounded parts of a color continuum by means of prototypical or focal colors. In fact, color terms may be a (or the) prototypical case of conceptual categorization or individuation by means of prototypes and boundaries.

In case of spatial orientation, on the other hand, there is abundant variation (e.g. Levinson 1996), but there is no clear radical - subtle distinction with regards to these differences. The most fundamental difference is probably that between body-centered systems of orientation (right vs. left), systems based on cardinal directions (east vs. west), and systems based on topographical


features (uphill vs. downhill). If certain languages would have some of these systems and absolutely no way to express other systems, then this could be considered a ‘radical’ difference in spatial orientation. However, it seems much more plausible that it is not so much a difference in what systems are available in a language, but which one is chosen as the default or dominant system, in which case there would be a subtle difference between schemes at most.

Of the two structure-centered approaches, only the case of number marking can be regarded as a viable field for the present purposes, mainly because Whorf’s (1956) explorations on temporal marking in Hopi were largely based on conversations with a single speaker of that language, which is insufficient for any reliable conclusions. Number marking is the way a language grammatically expresses number. English, for example, has plural (and articles), while Chinese, Japanese, Yucatec Maya, and many other languages do not express plural (or at least not when not absolutely necessary) (and have no articles). English nouns without plurals and without indefinite articles are mass nouns and partly for that reason some scientists and philosophers assumed that all nouns in these languages are (like) mass nouns. Furthermore, because English mass nouns refer to mass stuffs, some assume that the speakers of these languages therefore have mass-stuff ontologies. This is the mass noun thesis.

What is particularly interesting about the mass noun thesis is that it concerns grammatical rather than conceptual difference, a level of linguistic difference that thus far has been left mostly untouched in this paper. The assumed effect of grammar (in this case, but in the case of temporal marking as well), however, still seems to be of a conceptual nature, albeit on a higher level, in the sense that the concepts involved are of a higher order. Rather than prototypes and boundaries of relatively concrete concepts (such as color terms) the level of analysis shifts to the prototypes and boundaries of ontological categories. The mass noun thesis assumes a relationship between grammatical difference and the categories of things (or objects) and mass-stuffs. In terms of the prototype interpretation of radical difference then, a missing category or (significantly) different prototypes would constitute a radical difference, while a difference in the boundary between categories, would be a subtle difference.

Hence, we have two research fields to look for a radical difference: color terms and mass nouns. Of these two, color terms are comparatively straightforward, and will be dealt with in section 4 The mass noun thesis (the case of number marking) is considerably less straightforward, mainly because it is rather polymorphous, and requires much more explanation. Sections 5 to 7 explore some different aspects of number marking and the mass noun thesis, including two very different versions of the mass noun thesis: one about classical Chinese, the other about modern Japanese (in sections 6 and 7 respectively). After that, section 8, the final section of this paper, will consider the implications of the empirical findings for the notion of ‘radically different’ conceptual schemes as proposed here.

4 — color terms

The domain of color terms is an interesting but also slightly odd choice for studying categorization differences between languages. It is interesting because it is a good example of a domain that is continuous. Color terms individuate parts of that continuum in a seemingly arbitrary


fashion. It is rather odd at the same time, because it is difficult to see how differences in color classification could have a more than trivial influence on thought and why and how results found for color categorization are generalizable for (the relationship between) linguistic categorization and thought and perception in general.

Scientific interest in color classification goes back to the 19th century at least. However, the vast majority of papers published on the subject deal with a very small number of languages (usually one or two) and are rather anecdotal in approach. If a comparison is made, that is most commonly between English and one other – often unwritten, pre-industrial, and rather isolated – language. It is difficult to draw general conclusions from such specific case studies. For a long time, Berlin and Kay’s (1969) comparison of a considerably larger number of languages was the only exception. Based on this study, the scope of the research changed more recently to include an even larger number of languages. In the World Color Survey (WCS – Kay et al.1997, Cook et al. 2005), data about color classification for 110 unwritten languages is collected. Although there are some problems with the reliability of this data set – we will come back to that later – this is still by far the best resource available.

The WCS data was collected by fieldworkers (linguists and linguistic anthropologists) studying 110 different unwritten languages belonging to 45 different language families from all continents. For the vast majority of the languages in the data set 25 or a few more native speakers (that generally did not speak any other language) were interviewed. There were two types of questions or ‘tasks’. First, in the ‘color naming task’, respondents were shown a large number of colored chips and asked to name the color of that chip using a basic color term. Then, in the ‘focus mapping task’, they were asked to point out the focal colors or color foci for the basic colors on a color chart.

Generally, the data is used to make a chart of color foci not unlike the top chart called ‘foci’ in figure 1 (e.g. Kay & Regier 2006). Such charts show a – possibly surprising – similarity of color foci among languages. It seems that most languages agree about the prototypes of similar basic color terms. However, the chart also shows that there is a lot of similarity indeed, but no universality. Only white, black, red and orange/yellow show very clear peaks. (Note that the peaks for yellow and orange cannot be distinguished in the chart.) Blue and Green are rather spread out. Based on this chart, we can conclude that there is a tendency among languages to distinguish basic colors that more or less correspond to the English black, white, red, yellow, green, blue, and maybe orange, purple, brown, and gray (see also Berlin & Kay 1969).

It is merely a tendency though, because the chart also shows that any color can be a focal color, and that – aside from black and white – there is not that much agreement. Moreover, for about 20 to 30% of the languages in the dataset a majority of the respondents does not mention any basic color foci anywhere near either average blue or green. (For average yellow/orange, this is about 10%; for red, black and white, it is 0%.) However, this difference may also be subject to a more or less universal ‘law’ in the sense that color words are added in the following order: { black, white } , { red } , { green, yellow } , { blue } , { brown } , { orange, purple, gray, pink } (Berlin & Kay 1969), although there are exceptions (e.g. Forster 1998).

The second chart in figure 1, called ‘boundaries’, shows were the color boundaries were located by the different speakers. Contrary to the top chart, the numbers in this chart are all very high, but that is partly because of the way it is created (see explanation below the figure). What the second chart very clearly shows is that there is an enormous variation in color boundaries and that


boundaries are perceived even directly next to focal points (and right through focal areas). There is no clearly visible boundary between English yellow and orange, and the boundary between blue and green is vague. More in general, and most importantly, color boundaries can be anywhere. Hence, combining the two charts, we can conclude that color foci or color prototypes are relatively universal, but that boundaries are not.

figure 1: WCS color foci and color boundaries

data source — http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/wcs/data.htmlexplanation — Regarding both charts: the bar on the left goes from white through gray to black; the large rectangles from very light (top) to very dark (bottom) colors with red on the left, then yellow, green blue, etc. The left side of these rectangles connects to the right side. The top chart shows how often a particular chip was mentioned as a basic color focus (plural: foci). The chart used for this had a row of white spaces at the top and a row of black spaces at the bottom. These were not included in the chips for the color naming test on which the bottom chart is based. The bottom chart is a chart of color boundaries. It shows for every chip, how often a orthogonally neighboring chip was described with a different color term. There are two minimum values mentioned here. The lowest one (277) was for the white/gray/black bar on the left; the higher one (841) for the larger color chart.

However, there is reason to doubt the reliability of the data. Part of the problem is that the notion of ‘basic color term’ may be inappropriate for some languages. In the ‘Instructions to field workers’ the concept is defined by means of a list of criteria based on Berlin & Kay (1969). Most importantly, a basic color term is (a) monolexemic (if it is a compound term, then its meaning is opaque – i.e. cannot derived from the compounding parts); (b) does not describe a color range that is a subset of the color range of another color term; (c) is not restricted to a narrow class of objects; (d) is psychologically salient. This seems relatively straightforward, except that (c) may be problematic for some languages, but in the ‘Instructions to field workers’, the notion of basic terms is implicitly but strongly associated to ‘short responses’, and field workers are more or less urged to push their respondents to give such short responses:

2251-2507

1501-17501251-1500

2001-22501751-2000

boundaries401-2047

101-20051-10014-50

301-400201-300

red orange/yellow green blue

foci

277/841-1250


The object is to get the informant to name, preferably with a single word, each of the 330 chips. (p. 2) You will find that when the informant limits himself to short responses, the task is much easier, quicker, and less strained for both of you. (p. 3)

Secondly, in the ‘focus mapping task’, it is the field worker who selects the color terms used in this task. It is the field worker who decides which color terms are basic for the language he is researching, not the native speakers. This is especially important considering that these languages were generally largely unknown and that the field workers were mere students of these languages and were far from fluent (if they were, they did not have to do field work there), and consequently that these languages were studied by means of some form of ‘radical interpretation’ (Davidson 1973). Hence, there are two points at which the field workers could (and undoubtedly did) influence the respondents. First in the limitation of answers in the naming task, and then in the selection (from that already in that way limited set) of ‘basic color terms’. At both points it is likely (or insufficiently unlikely at least) that they were at least partially influenced by the color schemes of their native languages. And since it is impossible to say how big this influence is, to separate the respondents’ answers from possible field worker influence, to know with sufficient certainty whether the ‘basic color terms’ are the field worker’s or the respondent’s, that makes the data almost worthless.

Aside from this specific problem for the WCS data, there is a more fundamental problem in the domain-centered approach. The domain selected may not be as easily separated in other languages as it is in the researcher’s language. This is partially illustrated by criteria (c) for ‘basicness’ above. In some languages there may be color words that are specific for certain classes of things and that are not regarded to be special cases of generic color words. Mongolian color words for horses may serve as an example of this. And it is not unconceivable that there are languages that have class-specific color words only. While this would further subdivide the domain of color, the opposite is also possible. Color may not be an independent domain in some languages. In Hanunóo, for example, there is no independent conceptual domain of color, but there are terms related to the dimensions of dryness-wetness and light-dark that can be used to describe color as well (Conklin 1954, Lucy 1997b).

figure 2: a taxonomy (and trajectory) of color terms

To further illustrate the problem, and its implications for the question about ‘radical difference’, it may be useful to conceive a taxonomy of (types of) color terms as in figure 2. The first distinction in this taxonomy is that between pure color terms that have no other (primary)

multi-domain terms

color terms

pure color terms

sub-domain terms general color terms

basic color termsnon-basic color terms

ON ‘RADICALLY ’ D IFFERENT CONCEPTUAL SCHEMES 1 1

meaning than a specific color (range), and multi-domain terms that are not primarily about color, but involve color description in their meaning. Hanunóo color words are an example of the latter, but English ‘orange’ used to belong to this class as well. Within pure color terms a further distinction can be made between sub-domain terms and general color terms. The former can be applied to sub-domains only, such as horses in the case of Mongolian, while the latter can be applied to any kind of thing. Finally, within general color terms there are basic and non-basic color terms.

The English color term ‘orange’, mentioned above, is a particularly interesting (and illustrative) case. Although it is difficult to follow its exact historical trajectory through this taxonomy, the following – as graphically represented in figure 2 by means of the thick gray line – seems a likely history. In the first stage ‘orange’ was not a color term, but a name for a type of fruit. It became a multi-domain term in the second stage, denoting both a type of fruit and a color. In its usage, the color term, however, gained independence from the fruit name – it became a pure color term. As a pure color term, it may have initially been a sub-domain term applying to fruits and/or similar types of things only, but with a widening of its domain of application it gradually became a general color term, a non-basic one at first, but ultimately ‘orange’ became a basic color term. This last transition, from non-basic to basic color term took place when shades of oranges where no longer perceived as being shades of either yellow or red, but as a different color.

The trajectory of ‘orange’ through the taxonomy, the thick gray line in figure 2, is not unique to this color term or to the English language. Other color terms in other languages followed the same path, but there are other paths possible, and there are many cases in which it is very difficult to say where exactly a color term is situated (on this path or) in the taxonomy. Japanese 灰色 (hai-iro – gray) and 茶色 (cha-iro – brown), for example, are used as basic (or at least general) color terms, but literally, they mean ash-color and tea-color respectively, which might suggest a different classification (when Berlin and Kay’s above mentioned criteria are strictly applied). The character 色 (iro – color) may be deceptive here, suggesting a multi-domain term with a color application similar to ‘golden’ or ‘gold-colored’ in English. The same character, however, is found in 黄色 (ki-iro – yellow), but the character 黄 (ki) has no other meaning than yellow (although originally it meant something like ‘the color of fields’). An essential difference between compounds of Chinese characters like these words, and words in, for example, European languages, is that in the former etymology is never lost, while in the latter etymology slowly disappears in the mist of time. As a result, European color terms may seem more ‘basic’ than compounds of Chinese characters in Chinese or Japanese, and there may be other complications in the classification of color terms in other languages.

Berlin and Kay’s research program from their 1969 book up to the World Color Survey has shown a remarkable inter-linguistic similarity in the prototypes of basic color terms. There are considerable differences, however, in the boundaries between color terms and in the number of basic color terms distinguished. The significance of the latter finding is difficult to assess, but it may be mostly an artifact of the distinction between basic and other kinds of color terms. It may very well be the case that most languages recognize more or less the same color prototypes, but that the words they use to describe those have different statuses in terms of the taxonomy presented in figure 2, or that their statuses are misjudged because of structural differences between languages.


Consequently, while the WCS data does provide evidence for ‘subtle difference’ in the sense of color boundaries, there is not much evidence for ‘radical difference’ between conceptual schemes (in the domain of color). Whether the lack of evidence for significant differences between prototypes is a result of the classification of (types of) color terms or (other) aspects of methodology, or is caused by a real lack of difference between languages in this respect remains uncertain for now. The large body of more anecdotal case study research on the issue does not answer this question either. However, the extent of convergence of prototypes in the WCS data does seem to suggest a real lack of difference between prototypes as a likely cause.

Therefore, concluding this section, there is no (strong) evidence for radically different conceptual schemes with regards to color terms. There are substantial differences between languages, but these differences are ‘subtle’ rather than ‘radical’ in the sense that they are differences in concept boundaries, rather than concept prototypes.

5 — number marking and the ‘mass noun thesis ’

Contrary to color terms, number marking seems a much more likely candidate for a significant influence of language on thought and perception, if indeed there is a relationship between number marking and the ontological categories of things and stuffs. Whether there is radical and/or subtle cross-linguistic difference in this respect is the subject of this and the following sections. ‘Subtle difference’ here means a difference in the boundary between objects (or things) and masses; ‘radical difference’ would be either a lack of one of these categories, or a completely different categorization within the ontological domain of matter.

Number marking is the way a language grammatically expresses number. English, for example, has plural (and articles), while Chinese, Japanese, Yucatec Maya, and many other languages do not express plural (or at least not when not absolutely necessary) (and have no articles). English nouns without plurals and without indefinite articles are mass nouns and partly for that reason it is sometimes assumed that all nouns in these languages are (like) mass nouns (e.g. Quine 1968 for Japanese; Hansen 1983 for classical Chinese; Lucy 1992b for Yucatec Maya. ‘Partly’ for that reason, because there seems to be an additional similarity between English mass nouns and nouns in the other languages mentioned. This is a classifier system.

Classifiers (or ‘counters’) are words used in combination with a numeral. In Japanese ‘three cars’ would be 車三台 (kuruma san-dai) in which 車 (kuruma) means ‘car’, 三 (san) means ‘three’, and 台 (dai) is the classifier for mechanical objects such as cars. There are many different classifiers in Japanese, some of them for very specific subjects. Whenever something is counted, the right type of classifier has to be used. Modern Chinese and Yucatec Maya have similar systems. Quine (1968) and others compared this classifier system to the system of measures or individuating devices used for mass stuffs (denoted by mass nouns) in English. For example, ‘a cup of water’. (See also section 7.)

The mass noun thesis goes one step further than noticing the mere similarity between nouns and associated grammar in (classical) Chinese, Japanese, or Yucatec Maya and English mass nouns, and assumes that this grammatical (or morpho-syntactic) difference influences thought. To be more specific, it is assumed that all nouns in these languages are mass nouns which – in English


– usually denote mass stuffs (although there are exceptions like ‘luggage’) and that the people speaking these languages therefore have a mass stuff ontology.

A mass stuff ontology would be an ontology of substances, rather than shapes, of materials rather than objects. As such it would not be based on member - class relationships, but on mereological part - whole relationships. It would individuate ‘things’ only as contingent and trivially bounded parts of some property-bearing, nameable wholes. Hence, it is these wholes that would be primary, and the parts derivative, while in object-based ontologies, the objects, things, or entities are primary, and the classes they are members of, are a level of abstraction on top of these individuals.

Let us assume a society with a mass-stuff folk ontology, and let us assume a child growing up in that society. This child would have to form a concept of the mother-mass, the mother-whole, before recognizing its own mother as some contingent and arbitrarily bounded part of this mother-mass. And it would be the same for any other concept: rather than abstracting from the individuals perceived, and the regularities perceived in those individuals, into classes and subclasses, the child would have to form ideas of masses or wholes, before being able to recognize parts thereof. I think that to say that this is implausible is an understatement. And, moreover, it is in direct contradiction of the psychological finding that children develop concepts in reference to specific (individual) prototypes (e.g. Millikan 1998).

It seems much more likely that all folk ontologies recognize both objects and substances, things and masses. In fact, empirical evidence shows that children learn to make the distinction early. Shape and material are the discriminators commonly used, such that objects or things are classified (as such) by (perceived) shape, and substances or masses are classified (as such) by (perceived) material (e.g. Prasada, Ferenz & Haskell 2002). A more modest version of the hypothesis that a language without articles and plurals (but with a classifier system) results in a mass-noun ontology would be that speakers of such a language would classify ambiguous cases as substances or masses more easily in comparison to speakers of languages with articles and/or plurals. In other words, if there is cross-linguistic difference in categorization within the ontological domain of matter, it seems more likely that this is ‘subtle difference’ (different boundaries) rather than ‘radical difference’ (different prototypes or missing categories). For this much more modest hypothesis, there is some evidence in experimental psychological research about Japanese (see section 7).

It is important to note that this latter ambiguity is a different ambiguity than that from which the mass noun thesis originated. The ambiguity that may affect the boundary between objects and materials (or mass stuffs) refers to perceptual clues. It is an ambiguity in classification as things or stuffs. The ambiguity that the mass noun thesis is based on, on the other hand, is an ambiguity of words and of grammar (or morpho-syntax) rather than material things/stuffs. The nature of that ambiguity is that Japanese, Chinese, and Yucatec Maya nouns seem to be grammatically similar to English mass nouns, while these languages seem to have no grammatical equivalent of English count nouns. However, that a certain languages does not have certain grammatical categories does not (necessarily) mean that it cannot express ontological ideas associated to those grammatical categories in another language. Different languages and cultures may use different methods to express the same or similar ideas.


An important feature of Chinese and Japanese is that in many cases, what is clearly specified by context, does not have to be specified in a linguistic expression. This may to be related to Hall’s (1976) distinction of high context and low context cultures, which describes the extent to which a culture’s communicative strategies assume extensive in-group knowledge. In low context cultures, a lot has to be expressed explicitly, while in high context cultures, a lot of information is left out because it is assumed that people know or understand. While these concepts are generally applied to social groups such as subcultures, professional groups, etc. it can be applied to languages as well. However, in the case of Chinese and Japanese it is not primarily culture that supplements the missing knowledge needed for interpretation and understanding, but the (extra-) linguistic or narrative context. It is the broader story and/or situation a sentence is part of that determines whether 馬 refers to a specific horse, or a group of specific horses, or to horses in general.

A small-scale survey in English among (bilingual) native Chinese and Japanese speakers revealed that personal experience is a key factor in disambiguation. In a non-informative context, and without further specification, it is generally assumed that ‘dog’ (Ch: 狗, Jp: 犬) refers to either a definite or indefinite singular dog (‘the dog’ or ‘a dog’), with a slight preference for the second. One respondent explained that ‘the anticipated context is a specific (singular) dog, probably simply because that’s the most common occurrence of ‘dog’’ (my italics). Another remarked:

For me personally, without further cues, the mental picture is singular, as in, I see a single dog. This probably has to do with me living in an urbanized area, where I’m conditioned to think of dog as someone’s pet, and they usually appear singly. I suppose in another environment where, e.g., dogs roam in packs, my mental concept of 狗 could be different.

Because of differences in ‘anticipated context’ there are some subtle differences in the interpretations of the other concepts used in the discussion. For example, ‘car / vehicle’ (Ch: 汽車, Jp: 車) can either refer to definite singular car (‘the car’) or indefinite number-neutral car(s) (‘one or more cars’), depending on whether the respondent first thinks about his/her own car or about cars or vehicles as traffic. ‘Plant / vegetation’ (Ch/Jp: 植物) tends to be indefinite number-neutral plant(s), because the word in Chinese and Japanese means both plant and vegetation and the latter is – more or less – a mass stuff.

Aside from the reference to particular things or masses, either definite or indefinite, words can also be used in generalized statements to refer to all instantiations of a concept, a representative subset thereof, or something similar. Often the (grammatical) structure of the sentence the word is used in reveals whether the statement is about some horse(s) or horses in general, but here too there are ambiguous cases. In these cases again, personal experience and the meaning of the words involved are keys to disambiguation. For example, a statement like ‘like(s) dog(s)’ has many different possible interpretations, but it would be most commonly assumed that ‘dog(s)’ here means dogs in general. A syntactically identical statement ‘like(s) wife(s)’, however, is almost always interpreted as referring to a singular definite wife (‘his wife’).

Despite small variations based on personal experience and preference, in non-informative contexts there seems to be a strong preference for singular indefinite (‘a ...’) for objects and animates and number-neutral indefinite (‘one or more ...s’) for whatever is more likely to be understood as a substance or a category (such as ‘vehicles’ and ‘vegetation’). Most respondents explained that if concept and context do not clearly imply that the noun is not to be understood as


either of these two forms, this has to be specified explicitly in the sentence. However, in all cases, respondents imagined at least some minimal context. It may be the tone of the speaker’s voice, some visual information, the rest of the sentence, or just a particle, but there nearly always is some context. The idea of having a radically uninformative context was difficult to imagine for some respondents and seems to be highly hypothetical indeed. As one respondent remarked: ‘nouns would not usually be encountered without the context specification any more than an English verb can be honestly separated from its tense.’ (Nevertheless, further discussion with some of the respondents revealed that in such cases the default is indeterminate, meaning that both number and definiteness are left open awaiting further information.)

Hence, the difference between Japanese and Chinese on the one hand, and English on the other, is not in the possibility of expressing differences in number (and definiteness), but in the way of expression. Whether those differences in the way of expression significantly influence thought and perception is the topic of the next two sections. The first of these, section 6, deals with the case of classical Chinese, which is mostly a matter of philology since this is a dead language and the key text in this case is over two millennia old. The case of modern Japanese in section 7 on the other hand (and the related case of Yucatec Maya) is rooted in linguistic anthropology and analytic philosophy and has more recently become a research topic in experimental psychology. There is another important differences between these two versions of the mass noun thesis in the nature of the perceived grammatical ambiguity: classifiers are mostly irrelevant in case of the argument about classical Chinese, while they are the theoretical foundation of the mass noun thesis of modern Japanese.

6 — the White Horse dialogue

The mass noun thesis of classical Chinese is primarily related to the interpretation of some ancient philosophical texts and fragments, most notably Gongsun Long’s (Kung-sun Lung, 公孫龍

子, ca. 325-250 BCE) Discourse on White Horse (白馬論), a dialogue about the question whether it is acceptable or possible (可) to say that ‘white horse(s) (is/are) not horse(s)’ (白馬非馬). This question is answered affirmatively followed by a number of arguments. Different scholars have come up with widely differing interpretations of the dialogue, some regarding it as mere sophistry or a reductio ad absurdum, others as a valid philosophical point, or as a search for new ground in a confusing time (the ‘Warring States’ period). (See Cheng (ed.) (2007) for a recent overview of the different positions in the debate). Among this gamut of interpretations, one of the most well-known – and most hotly debated – interpretations is Hansen’s (1975, 1976, 1983) version (or application) of the mass-noun hypothesis. In this interpretation, ‘white’ (白) and ‘horse’ (馬) refer to mass-stuffs, and Gongsun Long’s argument is about the mereological properties of these mass-stuffs.

Different scholars of classical Chinese have taken different positions on the nature of classical Chinese nouns ranging from Cikoski’s (1978) assertion that classical Chinese nouns are ‘genuine mass nouns’ to Harbsmeier’s (1991) finding of ‘a reasonably clear grammatical distinction in classical Chinese between count nouns, generic nouns and mass nouns’ (p. 58), with, for example, Robins (2000) and Fraser (2007) somewhere in between. However, these theories


generally refer to grammar exclusively and make no claims about ontological implications. Furthermore, it is often stressed that the count - mass distinction may not be readily applicable to classical Chinese. Robins, for example, is quite explicit that the distinction between count and mass nouns is one of word function rather than word type. In any occasion, nouns function as one of the two types but ‘unlike English nouns, classical Chinese nouns need not be classified as count nouns or as mass nouns’ (p. 148). Fraser (2007) made more or less the same point, but also presented a rather convincing argument against the ontological extension of a perceived grammatical difference in the mass noun thesis:

the mere fact that a noun functions as a mass noun has no consequences whatsoever for how we conceive of the thing referred to by that noun. Using a mass noun to refer to something does not commit us to conceiving of that thing as an unstructured mass or as something that in itself does not divide naturally into countable units (...). Hence even if most noun occurrences in Classical Chinese function as mass nouns, this does not entail that ancient Chinese thinkers regarded people, horses, and medium-sized dry goods as unstructured, unindividuated ‘‘mass stuffs’’ like water and flour. Indeed, it entails nothing at all about their ontological views. (p. 427)

Fraser’s strongest argument against the mass noun thesis is probably his reference to the Mohist Canon A70 that deals with the instance-kind relation: ‘Models are what something is similar to and thereby is ‘so.’’ (法、所若而然也 – quoted from Fraser 2007, p. 439). The classical Chinese model of instantiation is not a model of mass stuffs and part-whole relationships, but one of individuated objects, being similar to some model (prototype) :

With respect to a general term, such as ‘‘horse,’’ to determine whether or not something is ‘‘so’’ – whether it falls within the extension of the term – we compare the thing to a ‘‘model’’ (fa 法) or paradigm of that kind of thing to see whether they are similar. (...) So the Mohists do not explain the instance-kind relation by appeal to the instance’s being part of a whole. Nor do they appeal to meanings, abstract concepts, essences, universals, or Platonic forms. They hold the nominalist view that things are instances of a kind by virtue of being similar ‘‘in a respect’’ (A86) to a model or paradigm. The respects in which they may be similar include ‘‘shape and look’’ (xing mao 形貌), ‘‘residence and migration’’ (ju yun 居運), and ‘‘amount and number’’ (liang shu 量數). (p. 439)

As mentioned above, the context of most of the debate on the grammatical and ontological nature of classical Chinese nouns is Gongsun Long’s Discourse on White Horse, often dubbed the White Horse dialogue or White Horse paradox. To make sense of the White Horse dialogue, is has to be understood within its (intellectual) historical context: the debate about the reference of compound nouns in classical Chinese in the Warring States period.

Classical Chinese was strongly monosyllabic. At least 80% of the words consisted of a single character with a single one-syllable pronunciation (e.g. Shi 2002; Arcodia 2006). The remaining 20% (or less) were compound terms consisting of two or more characters. These, however, posed a philosophical problem for the ancient Chinese, because there is no fundamental difference between a disyllabic word and a random (possible) combination of two independent monosyllabic words. The problematic nature of compound terms is related to, and further complicated by, the lack of a


fundamental distinction between most parts of speech in classical Chinese. Many words could function as noun, adjective or verb, with the (possible) meaning(s) of the word as the only restriction. The character 王 (wang), for example, could mean ‘king’ (noun), ‘kingly’ or ‘royal’ (adjective), or ‘reign’ (verb) depending on how it is used in a sentence. Consequently, if 白 (white) is not a fundamentally different type of word from 牛 (ox), then there also is no fundamental difference between 白馬 (white×horse: white horse(s)) and 牛馬 (ox×horse: draft animal(s)). This realization led to the central role of the nature of compounding in later Mohist philosophy of language.

The later Mohists distinguished two basic models of compounding: 堅白 (hard×white) and 牛馬 (ox×horse: draft animal(s)). 堅白 is the paradigm case for compounds of the form A and B; 牛馬 is the paradigm case for A and/or B. In other words, an entity can only be [hard×white] if it is both [hard] and [white]; while an entity can be [ox×horse] if it is either an [ox] or a [horse]. And in the case of plurals: a group of entities can only be [hard×white] if all of them are both [hard] and [white]; while a group of entities can be [ox×horse] if all (individual) members of that group are [ox] (oxen) or [horse] (horses) (it may be a mixed group, but it may also be just one type of animal).

According to Hansen (1976, 1983), Gongsun Long ‘rejects the ‘hard-white’ model and argues that ‘white-horse’ should function as ‘ox-horse’ does’ (p. 151). If 牛馬非馬 (ox×horse not horse) is possible (可), than so is 白馬非馬 (white×horse not horse). Manyul (2007), on the other hand, argues that Gongsun Long showed that both models result in the conclusion that ‘white horse(s) (is/are) not horse(s)’ ( 白馬非馬 ). In either interpretation, it is the later Mohist model of the reference of compound nouns that Gongsun Long responds to by means of his paradox.

Part of the problem in interpreting the White Horse dialogue is that it is not exactly phrased in the clearest terms possible. The question asked is 白馬非馬可平, whether it is 可 to state that 白馬非馬. 可 referred to ‘the appropriateness of utterance’ (Hansen 1983, p. 59), not to the actual truth of a statement, but to the possibility of that sentence describing an actual state of affairs. 可 is more or less equivalent with possibility in modal logic. Hence, the question asked seems to be whether there is an interpretation, a compounding function (represented by × above), such that some thing(s) are [white×horse] and not [horse]. Since the compounding function of the 牛馬model equates [white×horse] to [white] and/or [horse], which includes the possibility that [white] and not [horse], the question must be answered affirmatively indeed. However, this does not at all seem to be what Gongsun Long is trying to say. At least his arguments do not point in this direction. The essence of his arguments seems to be that the more specific compound 白馬 (’white horse’ as ‘horse that is white’) is not (extensionally) identical to the more general atomic 馬 (’horse’).

Gongsun Longzi exposes the Warring States assumption that when atomic terms are joined to make a compound term, they must continue to refer atomically to their respective parts in a composite group or individual, regardless of the type of composition those parts enter into. Such terms do not change their referential character due to compounding; they do not individually refer, even within a compound, to the larger composite group or individual of which they are parts. They continue to refer to what they have always referred to. For example, in “white horse,” “white” continues to refer to a color and “horse” to a shape, or form. If they did not, their


compounding could not function correctly to pick out the intended composite group or individual. (Manyul 2007, p. 168)

Interestingly, Gongsun Long makes the same (symmetrical) point he makes about ‘horse’ also about ‘white’, which makes perfect sense since adjectives and nouns were not fundamentally different in classical Chinese. The key phrase in the dialogue is: ‘‘White horse’ speaks about white as a determining white, the white that determines is not white (in general)’ (白馬者、言白定所白也、定所白者非白也). In other words, ‘a white horse’ is not the same as ‘a white something’, and similarly, ‘a white horse’ is also not the same as ‘a horse’. Or, in more general and more formal terms, the extension of a compound does not necessarily coincide with the extension of any of its composing terms.

One may wonder what all of this has to do with mass nouns, and the obvious answer is ‘not much’. There is no mass noun thesis needed to make sense of the White Horse dialogue. Rather in the contrary, the dialogue actually contains a strong argument against a mass noun interpretation. In the White Horse dialogue, Gongsun Long states that ‘‘horse’ is that which is used to command (name) a shape’ (馬者所以命形也 ), and shapes are the ontological counterparts of individuals rather than masses (e.g. Prasada, Ferenz & Haskell 2002). Therefore, in the case of classical Chinese – or at least in the case of the White Horse dialogue – the mass noun thesis is both unnecessary and implausible. And if there is no good reason to assume that the ancient Chinese had a mass-stuffs folk-ontology, then there is no ground for the assumption of radical difference between conceptual schemes (in this regard).

7 — mass nouns in modern Japanese

The question about the interpretation of nouns in Chinese or Japanese is a matter of translation. More to the point, it is an example of Quine’s (1960, 1968) indeterminacy of translation (or the inscrutability of reference). According to Quine, there are often a number of possible translations for some foreign language fragment and no objective way of choosing the ‘right one’, if there even is a ‘right’ translation. In ‘Ontological relativity’ (1968, p. 192ff) illustrates his notion with the example of Japanese classifiers. Japanese 五頭の牛 (go-tou no ushi) can be interpreted in two different ways. Either 牛 (ushi) represents the noun ‘ox’ and 五頭 (go-tou) together is a numeral specific to large mammals. The phrase 五頭の牛 then should be translated as ‘five oxen’. Or alternatively, 牛 stands for the mass noun ‘cattle’, 五 is the numeral 5, and 頭 means ‘head(s)’, in which case 五頭の牛 could be translated as ‘five heads of cattle’. However, the latter could just as well be translated as ‘five oxen’ because in all possible circumstances that denotes exactly the same. Quine’s point is, however, that although the translation is the same, the underlying ontological commitment is not. Whether 牛 is the equivalent of the English count noun ‘ox’ or the mass noun ‘cattle’ ‘is indeterminate in principle; there is no fact of the matter. Either answer can be accommodated by an account of the classifier’ (Quine 1968, p. 193).

Quine and most other proponents of the mass noun thesis of modern Japanese, Chinese, or Yucatec Maya (see below) assume that classifiers such as 頭 are similar to mass dividers like ‘a


cup of’ in English, and that the nouns in those languages therefore are mass nouns. There is, however, an essential difference with English mass dividers as pointed out by Iida (1998). While mass dividers have semantic values, meaning that there is a semantic difference between ‘a cup of water’ and ‘a bottle of water’, classifiers usually do not. (For mass stuffs there is a choice of classifiers as mass dividers similar to English, but for objects there usually is only one appropriate classifier, although many nouns are somewhat ambiguous and by choosing a specific classifier meaning can be disambiguated. In Japanese, for example: 手紙三通 (tegami san-tsuu) is ‘three letters’ and 手紙三枚 (tegami san-mai) is ‘a three-page letter’ because 通 (tsuu) counts communications and 枚 (mai) counts sheets.)

Generally the type of object counted is associated with one and only one classifier, and in most cases it is shape that determines which one. The latter is especially relevant since it focuses the attention of the speaker on shape, which is – as mentioned above – the key identifier of objects (rather than masses – Prasada, Ferenz & Haskell 2002). Hence, ‘even in Japanese there is a distinction between an individuative term and a mass term, and its speaker has a mastery of that distinction’ (Iida 1998, p. 115). This has indeed be confirmed in a number of tests with small children from English and Japanese language backgrounds. Such experiments have been done mainly by experimental psychologists and linguistic anthropologists. The latter field, linguistic anthropology, is the other main source (aside from Quine) of the mass noun thesis of Japanese.

Interest in the distinction between mass and count nouns and its ontological implications in linguistic anthropology started with the work of Lucy (1992b), arguably the most prominent modern defender of the Sapir-Whorf thesis. In researching Yucatec Maya, Lucy (1992b) developed and tested the hypothesis that Yucatec Maya nouns, because of their grammatical features, are mass nouns, and that therefore, the speakers of that language have a mass stuff ontology. The relevant aspects of Yucatec Maya also appear in Japanese, which inspired a number of scientists to test a version of Lucy’s hypothesis for Japanese. However, Mazuka and Friedman (2000) did not find anything similar. They argue that Japanese and English speakers have more similar educational and cultural backgrounds than Yucatec Maya and English speakers, and that that difference rather than linguistic differences may explain Lucy’s findings.

That speakers of Japanese (and Chinese) make a distinction between objects and masses similar to English speakers has been confirmed by, among others, Imai and Gentner (1997) and Yoshida and Smith (2003). (For a recent overview of the empirical work on the mass noun thesis of modern Japanese (and Chinese), see Imai & Saalbach 2009.) Imai and Gentner (1997) tested whether 2-year old Japanese-speaking children made a similar ontological distinction between objects and substances as English-speaking (American) children did according to an earlier study (Soja et al., 1991). They found that children from both languages differentiated between objects and substances and suggested that the distinction is universal. However, they did find a difference in the exact location of the boundary with regards to more ambiguous cases between the two languages. For English speaking children shape was slightly more important in classification, while for Japanese children the focus tended to be more on material. Consequently, ambiguous cases were more easily classified as substances by Japanese children and as objects by English-speaking children. ‘In sum, our evidence suggests that children may universally possess an ontological distinction between individuated objects and non-individuated substances, and that this distinction informs their word learning. However, the structure of their language influences where and how this division is made’ (p. 189). (See also Imai & Mazuka 2006.)


Hence, in the case of modern Japanese, there is little evidence for the mass noun thesis. Speakers of Japanese make a very similar distinction between things (or objects) and mass stuffs as speakers of English. There does seem to be a linguistic effect, but it is a rather subtle one – it merely affects the boundary between categories, not the categories themselves. Consequently, there is no evidence for ‘radical’ difference, but there is evidence for ‘subtle’ difference, for what Yoshida and Smith (2003) call a ‘boundary shift’.

8 — the case against ‘ radical ’ d ifference

Assuming that there are conceptual schemes, differences between schemes may fall into different categories. Some differences may make them ‘incommensurable’ (Kuhn) or ‘uncalibratable’ (Whorf), while other differences may cause only minor problems in inter-linguistic communication. The former difference would be ‘radical’ difference, the latter merely ‘subtle’. Neither Kuhn, nor Whorf, however, suggests a formal criterion that makes a difference between schemes a ‘radical’ difference.

Conceptual schemes are systems of conceptual categorization. Hence, it seems obvious to appeal to theories of concepts for insights on types or levels of differences between conceptual categories. Of the many theories of concepts, only prototype theory seems to be able to accommodate non-dichotomous identity and difference. According to prototype theory, concepts are characterized and identified by a relatively small number of prototypes. Around those prototypes, there is a larger ‘gray area’ of less typical members of that category, or instantiations of that concept. Consequently, there can be two types of differences between apparently similar categories or concepts: difference of prototypes, and difference of outer boundaries of the gray area. It is this distinction that is employed here. ‘Radical difference’ is understood as difference of prototypes; while ‘subtle difference’ is mere difference of boundaries. By extension, conceptual schemes are radically different if they have a substantial number of radically different concepts (in a relevant context) and subtly different (or not different at all) otherwise.

Radical difference between conceptual schemes – interpreted in this way – is evidently theoretically possible, but the interpretation is not particularly useful if there is no actual radical difference. The two research fields that seemed to be able to shed light on the issue whether there actually are such radically different conceptual schemes are color terms and number marking.

In case of color terms (section 4), what difference there is in color classification, seems to be difference in the number of basic colors distinguished and/or in color boundaries. The latter is clearly a case of ‘subtle’ difference (in fact, it is a prototypical case of non-prototypical difference), but the former is more difficult to interpret. Differences in numbers of basic colors seem to imply missing prototypes in one language, and therefore radical difference. However, the missing basic colors may be denoted by non-basic color terms in that language, and the fact that there seems to be a pattern in the addition of basic color terms suggests that these missing basic color terms are indeed already conceptualized or at least easily conceptualizable in some non-basic form.

In the domain of number marking, the way languages deal with plurality, it was the mass noun thesis that was of interest here. According to this hypothesis, in some languages, particularly Yucatec Maya, classical Chinese, and modern Japanese, all nouns are mass nouns and therefore the


speakers of those languages have a mass-stuff ontology. The notion of ‘mass noun’, however, is a grammatical category that may not be readily applicable to different languages. Moreover, the fact that some languages make a certain connection between grammatical and ontological categories does not imply that other languages make a similar connection.

It seems that the mass noun thesis is based on a misunderstanding of the differences and similarities between languages. Essentially, the mass noun thesis is founded on a confusion of ways and contents of expression, and/or of grammar and ontology (section 5). Moreover, it is not just ill-founded, it also has absurd implications (section 5), lacks explanatory necessity (section 6), and is empirically refuted (section 7). Concerning the latter, empirical evidence shows that the linguistic difference plays a minor role in ambiguous cases. Speakers of Japanese classify ambiguous cases as materials (stuffs) more easily, while speakers of English show a slight preference for classification as objects (things) in those cases. Hence, with regards to number marking too, the difference is a difference in boundaries rather than prototypes; it is a subtle rather than radical difference.

The empirical evidence in both the case of color terms and the case of number marking (the mass noun thesis) points in the same direction: there are differences between conceptual classifications between languages, but these differences are differences in concept boundaries, not in concept prototypes. Hence, the evidence supports subtly different conceptual schemes, but refutes radically different conceptual schemes. Lacking another (relatively) formal criterion for ‘radicalness’, we may have to do away with ‘radically different’ conceptual schemes, and focus on ‘subtle’ differences instead. Such subtle differences may not seem as compelling as radical differences between schemes, until someone strikes a match in the empty gasoline drum storage (see section 2) and it explodes. Then we realize that the subtle differences are far more deceptive, and far more virulent, than any rather conspicuous radical difference could ever be.


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on ‘radically’ different conceptual schemesassuming that there are different conceptual schemes,...

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