Language structure is partly determined by social structure.

PloS One
Gary Lupyan, Rick Dale

Abstract

Languages differ greatly both in their syntactic and morphological systems and in the social environments in which they exist. We challenge the view that language grammars are unrelated to social environments in which they are learned and used. We conducted a statistical analysis of >2,000 languages using a combination of demographic sources and the World Atlas of Language Structures--a database of structural language properties. We found strong relationships between linguistic factors related to morphological complexity, and demographic/socio-historical factors such as the number of language users, geographic spread, and degree of language contact. The analyses suggest that languages spoken by large groups have simpler inflectional morphology than languages spoken by smaller groups as measured on a variety of factors such as case systems and complexity of conjugations. Additionally, languages spoken by large groups are much more likely to use lexical strategies in place of inflectional morphology to encode evidentiality, negation, aspect, and possession. Our findings indicate that just as biological organisms are shaped by ecological niches, language structures appear to adapt to the environment (niche) in which they are being...Continue Reading

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Citations

May 30, 2012·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences·Todd M FreebergTerry J Ord
May 30, 2012·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences·Daniel Nettle
Jun 23, 2012·PloS One·Francesca TriaVittorio Loreto
May 10, 2013·Proceedings. Biological Sciences·Thomas E CurrieRuth Mace
Jan 22, 2015·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Caleb EverettSeán G Roberts
Jun 29, 2015·Cognition·Thomas T Hills, James S Adelman
Feb 18, 2012·Trends in Cognitive Sciences·Stephen C Levinson, Russell D Gray
Mar 2, 2016·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences·Michael Muthukrishna, Joseph Henrich
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Aug 27, 2015·Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews. Cognitive Science·Kaius Sinnemäki
Jan 28, 2014·Cognitive Science·Amy Perfors, Daniel J Navarro
May 19, 2011·PloS One·Eduardo G AltmannAdilson E Motter
Nov 20, 2014·PloS One·Jacob EisensteinEric P Xing
Jul 18, 2015·PloS One·Seán G RobertsKeith Chen
Sep 14, 2016·Frontiers in Neuroscience·Antonio Benítez-BurracoElliot Murphy
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Aug 19, 2020·Cognitive Science·Limor RavivShiri Lev-Ari
Aug 12, 2017·Frontiers in Psychology·Caleb Everett
Jan 20, 2018·Cognitive Science·Kensy CooperriderRafael Núñez

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