Humpty Dumpty

Jennifer phrased it so nicely in the comments I really have no other option than to use her wording: What we have here is a Chicken and Egg situation. Which came first? Who birthed who? We can’t say the chicken because then where did it come from? The egg of course, which came from what again? Oh yeah, the chicken. Now we’re right back where we started at.

The same paradoxical situation occurs in our look into the language and culture connection. Which came first: language or culture? Did one form out of the other? Or are they mutually exclusive? And does either of them impact the way we see and interpret the world?

Lera Boroditsky sets up an interesting argument in her article Lost in Translation about languages’ impact on our worldviews. The way an English speaker views/interprets an event is different than that of a person with a different native tongue. Just play along for a second:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a…

We know what comes next don’t we? Well wait a second, are you sure about that?

Let’s forget we speak English for a moment. Then what? So far into the story all we’ve got to work with is a rather large Egg sitting on top of a wall and we haven’t the slightest clue as to why.

In English Humpty is a male egg, we’re never explicitly told this after all—English verbs are neither feminine nor masculine—but since Humpty is displayed in the story books in male clothing we assume that the Egg who does the sitting is a boy, the language cannot tell us any different. But what is it my mother always said about making assumptions? That’s right, they make an as…tronomical jerk ‘outta u and me.

Do all languages view this story the same? In Russian there is a separate verb tense for the sexes. That is, the verb for ‘sit’ will be different depending on if that Egg is a Mr. Dumpty or a Miss. Dumpty. And hold that thought. Did Humpty (the he or she version) finish the act of sitting before they proceeded with the act of falling? Or was the sitting action interrupted, say by a swift wind or the sound of a frying pan heating up, and then a Humpty to fell to his cracking? Yep, you guessed it: in Russian a completed action is conjugated differently than an interrupted action.

So depending on how the story is worded in those story books we get 4 very different mental pictures:

1)   A male Mr. Humpty Dumpy sat (in the completed action sense of the word) on a wall, then…

2)   A female Miss humpty Dumpty sat (in the completed action sense of the word) on a wall, then…

3)   A male Mr. Humpty Dumpty sat (in the oops, I got interrupted during my sit sense of the word) on a wall, then…

4)   A female Miss Humpty Dumpty sat (in the oops, I got interrupted during my sit sense of the word) on a wall, then…

Maybe that’s just the Russian language being difficult you say? We’ll that’s not entirely true; the Turkish language provides an interesting twist in the story telling.

Who is telling us this story anyways? Looking back on it I never question Mother Goose’s account of this story much, although in hind-sight I should have been a little skeptical of a Goose telling me stories about little families that live in shoes and Eggs that sit on walls dressed in outfits straight out of Shakespearian times. But that’s another point completely, we’ll get to my gullibility soon enough.

Back to the Turkish language: the story changes, that is the verb tense changes, depending on who does the telling. Is this Humpty sitting and falling a first hand account? Were you, the storyteller, actually there? Were you trying to help all the king’s horses and all the king’s men put that Humpty back together again or did you hear this story from a reliable (or unreliable for that matter) source? In Turkish verbs, this qualifying detail matters. Yep, you get 2 different verbs depending on if this story is told from your point of view or if it’s a second hand story.

I know this simple story is getting complicated. Then again, a native Russian speaker reading this story in English for the first time might think we’re a little dense to not ever question if Humpty is a girl or boy, and to them it makes no sense that we don’t care if the sitting action was completed or not. The Turkish guy or gal is probably nodding in agreement with the Russian that English speakers are weird, I mean who doesn’t check to see who’s telling the story before believing it?

Well let’s take the story aspect out of play for a second. Let’s assume we’re all there: at the foot of this big ol wall. We, the Russian, Turk, and you the English speaker, are all looking straight up at this egg. For the sake of this scenario, its just an Egg, I’m going to let each of you make up our own mind about its sex in a second.

The just plain old Egg of this story

So you’re watching this egg start to sit—now depending on how you interpret this action it can either be completed or incomplete, I’m not making the rules here that’s up to you, the eye-witnesses. So, either after he’s done or while he’s in the process a neutral gendered egg has a great fall and cracks into a million pieces in the most rated G for a child’s story book kinda way.

Here’s the crucial part, are you paying attention? Good, how are you each going to interpret what just happened. As eye witnesses to the event.

You, the English speaker, we presume has prior knowledge of this event. You grew up reading about it; you’ve heard the story hundreds of times and probably have my same mental picture of Humpty all dressed up in old-timey clothes and a top hat. So you’ve brought some baggage to this eyewitness account haven’t you? You’re going to assume that Humpty’s a male, and that it doesn’t matter if he fell after or during the process of sitting, that lines not in the poem and we’re not even going to think about it because it messes up the AABB rhyme scheme.

The Mr. Humpty Dumpty from my child hood

What about the Russian and the Turk? What preconceptions do they bring to this story? Maybe one or both of them assume Humpty is a girl because girls like to sit on walls (hey, I’m just saying, it could be true), then what? Well for starter’s we’ve got a different view on the events. Then the Russian has to determine in his own right if the sitting act was completed or not. It’s his call: I’m not influencing it because frankly, my language doesn’t care either way.

Boroditsky focused on Russian, Turkish, and English most likely because those are the languages she’s familiar with. So now it’s my turn: What about a Spanish speaker?

Lets add a Spanish speaker to our neutral egg doing the sitting scenario. Well right off the bat the witness must make a choice, is it a Miss Humpty or a Mr. Humpty? To my knowledge the verb for sitting doesn’t deviate from that which an English speaker would say (but there is a chance I could be wrong here, let me know), the egg sat and then what?

Well this is where the Spanish speaker is going to have to decide on a few things. Did Humpty fall intentionally (i.e. he/she jumped) or did he/she fall unintentionally (i.e. he/she got pushed)? If Humpty jumped, then he’s no longer falling, he’s jumping and we’re using a different verb.

But let’s say the falling was an accident, then what? Well the verb ‘to fall’ in Spanish is a reflexive one, that means the action needs to be placed on someone or something. In this case the Spanish speaker would view the accidental act of Humpty falling (that is, they didn’t see anyone push Humpty) as the ‘egg fell and broke itself.’

Ooo now we’re getting somewhere, the Spanish speaker places the blame of the falling on poor old cracked Humpty. That’s a difference from how the English speaker, the Russian speaker, and the Turkish speaker would view it.

How does this difference in views/understandings of the events extend beyond our Humpty Dumpy story? As Boroditsky points out, “such differences between languages have profound consequences for how their speakers understand events, construct notions of causality and agency, what they remember as eyewitnesses, and how much they blame and punish others.”

For example, Caitlin Fausey, a post-doctorial research fellow at Stanford University conducted a study with participants who spoke English, Japanese and Spanish. She showed the study participants a video of two people popping balloons, cracking eggs (in a literal sense this time, not in a fairy tale), and spilling drinks on each other both intentionally and unintentionally. Next up was a pop quiz, testing participant’s recollections of these events. What Fausey found was fascinating:

She asked the participants if they could remember, for each event, who did it? Spanish and Japanese speakers (who both share the reflexive nature of their verbs) couldn’t remember the culprit of the accidental events as well as the English speakers.  Additionally, when the event was intentional (i.e. their native language uses a reflexive verb that places blame on the person doing the spilling), everyone was able to remember the events just as they occurred and who did the spilling on whom.

What are the implications of this study? For one, that the way that we interpret and remember events is affected by the structure of our language. So case closed, Language affects the way we view the world, not the other way around. Thank you very much and good night? Nope, not so fast, as Boroditsky points out,

“Languages, of course, are human creations, tools we invent and hone to suit our needs. Simply showing that speakers of different languages think differently doesn’t tell us whether it’s language that shapes thought or the other way around.”

I came across this article when I was living in Peru serving in the Peace Corps. I was in what most volunteers refer to as the “senioritis” phase of my service. I had about 5 months left to go, and most of my projects were winding down, it was the home stretch if you will. I spent most of my time working in my community garden with local mothers. We had a huge pile of compost (25 Kg, that’s 55lbs, to be exact) almost done decomposing and just begging to be spread around in the newly opened section of the garden. I, being a slight perfectionist, suggested waiting one more week to let it cool off a little before spreading it and left town for a regional meeting of volunteers.

When I got home, my first thought was to go and check on my garden, make sure that it had been watered and take care of while I was away. And to my shock, all my compost was gone. G.O.N.E. gone. I could still see the shovel marks on the dirt where it used to be. My inner C.S.I geek wanted to take pictures of the crime scene and make a mold of the shovel scrapings so that forensic evidence could be used to determine who stole our compost and with what shovel!

I went back to my house to tell my host mom this story and she laughed at me. “Yennifer,” she told me, “nadies se llevó tu compost, ya se escapó” which roughly translates to “no one stole your compost, it escaped.”

I was furious, seeing red, and all sorts of confused as to how my host mother, who I deemed a rational and intelligent woman, was not able to see that someone stole my compost. It took me reading this article to get it: since no one saw who did the stealing, there was no stealing. One afternoon it was there, the next it wasn’t. Therefore, logically, it ran away.