“On Language” 10/13: Linguistic evidence for reincarnation?
Skeptic scoffs at the link between language and past lives
‘On Language‘
Chicago Tribune
October 13, 2005
By Nathan Bierma
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Linguist Sarah Thomason has published critiques in the journals American Speech and Skeptical Inquirer of linguistic claims about reincarnation, especially the findings of Ian Stevenson, a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia. Beginning in the 1970s, Stevenson studied subjects such as a West Virginia woman who, under hypnosis, conversed in German and claimed to be a 19th Century German teenager named Gretchen.
Thomason studied Stevenson’s transcripts of conversations with “Gretchen” and concluded the woman couldn’t have been a native of Germany in a former life.
“Gretchen usually answers with just a word or two rather than in full sentences,” Thomason wrote in the Skeptical Inquirer. “All she seems to know, either for speaking or for understanding, is a handful of words.” Many of Gretchen’s words, Thomason added, closely resemble their English equivalents—“braun,” for example, is the German word for “brown.”
Of Gretchen’s responses to questions she was asked in German, many were either repetitions of the question or “ja” or “nein” (“yes” or “no”). Of Gretchen’s other 102 responses, Thomason said, only 28 were “appropriate” or sensible answers, while 45 did not make sense and 29 were “cop-out” answers such as “I don’t understand” or “I don’t know.”
Thomason says that in one telling exchange, the interviewer asks, “Was gibt es nach dem Schlafen?” This literally translates “What is there after sleeping?” but is intended to mean “What do you eat for breakfast?” Gretchen answers, “Schlafen, Bettzimmer,” meaning “Sleep, bedroom.” Thomason points out that not only did Gretchen misunderstand the question, she uses the word “Bettzimmer,” while a native German speaker would say “Schlafzimmer,” literally “sleep room.”
“Do we need a paranormal explanation for her knowledge of some German words and phrases? Surely not,” Thomason wrote.
Robert Almeder responds with these comments:
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