Conceptual Schemes

The ancient Greek poet Homer described the sea as being ‘red wine-like’ in colour. Why do you think he did that?

We have learned about how human beings learn concepts, and concepts are like tools that we can use to understand the world.

These concepts are connected together in complex webs. We can call this web of concepts our conceptual scheme.

Each concept we discuss is just a tiny part of a huge complex web. Just think, on average, 12-year-olds know about 50,000 words.

But different cultures have different conceptual schemes. The Piraha, for example, don’t have any numbers and they don’t understand them because they have no use for them. Numbers for the Piraha are simply a tool without a use. Giving numbers to the Piraha is a bit like someone giving you the following object:

Different conceptual schemes: Numbers

Lots of different cultures have different conceptual schemes when it comes to numbers.

The number system of the Gwandara language of Nigeria is base 12, so they have two extra numerals. So 10 in their system is 12 in ours.

The number system of the Muisica people (who lived in the Americas before the Spanish invasion) was base 20. So 10 in their system is 20 in ours.

The ancient Babylonians had a weird system which was base 60.

If any of you speak French, you will see the remnants of the Gaulish language, which was also base 20, in the French number words. The word for 80 is quatre-vingts - literally four twenties.

This might seem odd, but if you think about our own conceptual schemes, we sometimes use base 12 (in timekeeping - we have 12 months, 12 hours on a clock). And when it comes to degrees in a circle, we work in base 360! (This is because we have borrowed part of the conceptual schemes of the Babylonians.)

Mostly, we can translate easily enough from one conceptual scheme to another - kwada in Nimibian Gwandara is equivalent to eleven in English.

Discussion

In Nimibian Gwandara, 24 is gume bi, and 25 is gume bi ni da.

What do you think gume bi ni bo’o is in English numbers?

What do you think gume kwada ni kwada is in English numbers?

Sometimes we can’t translate, however, because a culture simply doesn’t have an equivalent concept. For example, many early cultures didn’t have a 0, and it is impossible to translate 7 into Piraha.

Different conceptual schemes: Colours

Colour concepts are another good example of how concepts help us to organise (bring order to) our experience.

A colour is an area of the spectrum of visible light.

Anthropologists Brent Berlin and Paul Kay found that cultures tend to develop their colour concepts in similar ways:

First, they name dark/cool colours, and warm/light colours.

Then they name red

Then they name yellow/green

Then they name blue

Then they name brown

They name others – purple, pink, orange, grey

The languages of different cultures have divided up the spectrum differently – i.e. they have different colour concepts. E.g. The Pirahã have words for ‘light’ and ‘dark’ and then a word for ‘blood-like’, but that’s it. E.g. the ancient Greek language in which Homer (the author of the Iliad) wrote, did not have the concept of ‘blue’, so he wrote about the ‘wine-dark sea’.

Often, when Japanese people learn english, they will describe the traffic light colours as red, yellow, and blue. The reason is that the traditional Japanese word used to describe the colour of the ‘go’ light is ao, and that word covers quite a range of colours. Each of the following colours are Ao:

A researcher called Asifa Majid has studied how Jahai people of the Malay peninsula group colours differently from English people. You can see these groups in the following diagram she made:

Discussion

What an English person may call green, a Jahai person will describe with their word for ‘yellow’ etc. What other differences can you find?

People don’t name colours differently because they see (or perceive) different things. People name colours differently because they have different concepts (different tools). Colour words are an example of how different languages represent the world differently.

Tasks

What is a conceptual scheme?
Why do the Piraha not understand numbers?
Give two examples of conceptual schemes with different numbering systems.

4. What colour is this? (What would a Piraha call it? What would Homer call it? What would it be called in traditional Japanese? What would Jahai people call it? Has the colour changed?)

#logic

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