Friday, October 14, 2005
“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:
One might suppose the plausibility of Thomason’s position on Stevenson’s thesis that one can speak in a language one has not learned in this life on rests on her claim that one can simply guess successfully what others might be asking in a foreign language if some of their responses are non-sensical replies in something that looks like german. But does that explanation work if the number of correct answers (even if only 29 in number and not restricted to one word replies , like ya or nein,) are well formed sentences in response to well-formed questions in that foreign language? To say that any combination of guessing, passive exposure, reading subtitles of movies and reading german textbooks will be adequate to explain the 29 well-formed sentences, seems like an hypothesis that needs some confirmation in the light of the fact that one cannot understand the subtitles or the textbooks, or any passive exposure to the well-formed sentences without already understanding what has been said in that language. Where are the published studies that show how it is possible to utter 29 well formed sentences in response to questions asked in a in a language one has not learned.? It is one thing to say that the phenomena in question can be explained in this way, and quite another to show it. Thomason’s alternative explanation here seems more like a hand-waving dismissal than an attempt to show how we can replicate such a phenomena without having to adopt Stevenson’s thesis that in fact these people have spoken in a foreign language they did not learn in this life. Secondly, for anybody who has in fact read the Gretchen transcripts, it will be evident that Thomason’s assessment of just how many well-formed sentences there are there, outside of misses and one word responses, is questionable. My point was that even if we accept her analysis of the text, the admission that there are 29 well formed sentences that are proper replies to well-formed questions asked in German, needs an explantion if it is not to count for knowing a foreign language. Also native german speakers these days would use “Schlaffzimmer” rather than “Bettzimmer” but does she know what words the german speaker would use in a remote dialect around the time of the reformation? And is it not just possible that in those cases where she apparently did not understand the question the dialect and vocabulary used diverged in significant ways from the dialect and vocabulary used in a small village at the time of the reformation in Germany?
I too found that some of the responses uttered in german by Grethchen were not unlike some sixth grader trying to speak german with little exposure, and a bit of guessing. But it was the other well-formed sentences ( considerably more than 29 and in response to well-formed questions posed in german) that seemed to cry out for a much better explanation than what professor Thomason has offered, and presumably that ultimate explanation should be empirically testable rather than asserted as obvious. For those of us who have stuidies and speak several foreigh languages ( including German) it is by no means obvious. One might add, finally, that the viability of reincarnation as a thesis for explaining best a large body of empirical data ( customarily ignored, ridiculed, or rejected out of hand as fraudulent) is by no means solely, or even necessarily, dependent on whether people who claim to be reincarnated can speak the foreign language of the previous personality. One can establish the thesis empirically quote independently of the linguistic evidence in question.