# Origins, Evolution and Linguistic Relativity

Languages I · Introduction to Linguistics · https://tryals.app/learn/languages-i/origins-evolution-and-linguistic-relativity

## Where Language Came From

Speech leaves no fossils, so evidence is indirect.

- **Anatomy.** The human larynx sits lower than other primates', enlarging the vowel space. This creates a choking risk, suggesting selection for speech.
- **Genetics.** The *FOXP2* gene was identified in the **KE family**, where a single mutation caused severe speech disorders.
- **Archaeology.** Symbolic artefacts like beads and engravings serve as proxies for symbolic capacity.

### Theoretical Debates

- **gesture-first**: Language began with manual signs and shifted to speech.
- **vocal continuity**: Language evolved directly from primate vocal calls.
- **suddenly**: Language appeared via a single mutation for recursion.
- **gradually**: Language evolved in small steps over time.

Overall, the origin of language remains underdetermined by the evidence.

## Does Language Shape Thought?

The **Sapir–Whorf hypothesis** contains two distinct claims:

- **Linguistic determinism**: Language determines what you can think. This strong claim is largely abandoned.
- **Linguistic relativity**: Language influences habitual patterns of thought. This weaker claim has empirical support.

| Domain | Finding |
|---|---|
| **Colour** | Berlin and Kay found terms emerge in a fixed order. Languages have between 2 and 11 basic terms. |
| **Colour, revisited** | Russian distinguishes light and dark blue. Russian speakers discriminate this boundary faster than English speakers. |
| **Space** | Guugu Yimithirr uses cardinal directions, promoting constant spatial orientation. |
| **Grammatical gender** | Gendered nouns subtly bias descriptive adjectives, though effects are small. |

The Russian colour effect **vanishes when speakers are given a verbal task at the same time**. This shows language acts as an online tool rather than rewiring perception.

> **Common pitfall:** The myth about words for snow. Counting vocabulary is not evidence for altered perception.

## Practice questions

10 of this lesson's 13 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app.

### 1. The Russian-blues advantage disappears when speakers perform a verbal task at the same time. Why does that detail matter so much?

A. It proves that linguistic determinism operates directly on early sensory processing in every human language
B. It suggests language is recruited as a strategy during the task rather than perception being permanently altered
C. It demonstrates that the learned category boundary becomes hardwired into the visual cortex over time
D. It indicates that the original distinction was an experimental artefact produced by generalised cognitive fatigue

**Answer:** B. It suggests language is recruited as a strategy during the task rather than perception being permanently altered

**Why:** Because an effect that vanishes when language is occupied is an effect **using** language, not one built into perception. That supports a narrow and defensible version of relativity, habitual categories are recruited when useful, and undercuts the strong claim that speakers of different languages perceive different worlds.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/origins-evolution-and-linguistic-relativity/the-russian-blues-advantage-disappears-when-speakers-perform-a-verbal

### 2. Sort each claim by whether it belongs to linguistic DETERMINISM or the weaker RELATIVITY.

**Answer:**

- Determinism (strong): You cannot think what your language has no word for, Translation between languages is impossible in principle, Thought is fully determined by the grammar of the language
- Relativity (weak): Habitual categories influence what you attend to, Grammatical gender nudges how objects are described

**Why:** The strong column is what was abandoned, and it was abandoned for good reasons: speakers coin words, borrow them, and describe things their language has no term for constantly. The weak column is where the surviving evidence lives, and it is a claim about tendencies rather than limits.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/origins-evolution-and-linguistic-relativity/sort-each-claim-by-whether-it-belongs-to-linguistic-determinism-or

### 3. FOXP2 is best described as the gene for language.

**Answer:** False

**Why:** **False.** FOXP2 is involved in motor sequencing, exists across vertebrates, and differs between humans and chimpanzees at two amino acids. The KE family's disorder shows that disrupting it disrupts speech and language, which is a long way from it being *the* gene for either.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/origins-evolution-and-linguistic-relativity/foxp2-is-best-described-as-the-gene-for-language

### 4. The human descended larynx increases choking hazards yet expands phonetic range. Why does this morphological trade-off support natural selection for speech over simple non-adaptive drift?

A. The trait emerged through sudden genetic drift
B. Adaptive benefits must outweigh survival risks
C. Choking risks were eliminated by vocal habits
D. Expanded vowel range was an accidental byproduct

**Answer:** B. Adaptive benefits must outweigh survival risks

**Why:** Costly traits persist only when conferring strong selective advantages that offset their survival penalties. Misinterpreting this as drift overlooks the severe fitness cost of choking, while viewing vowel expansion as a mere byproduct ignores the anatomical trade-off.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/origins-evolution-and-linguistic-relativity/the-human-descended-larynx-increases-choking-hazards-yet-expands

### 5. What is the maximum number of basic colour terms Berlin and Kay found in any language?

**Answer:** 11

**Why:** **Eleven**, with the smallest inventories having two, and the terms emerging in a near-fixed order, dark and light first, then red, then green and yellow, and so on. The near-universality of the ordering was what made the result matter: it argued against colour vocabulary being arbitrary.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/origins-evolution-and-linguistic-relativity/what-is-the-maximum-number-of-basic-colour-terms-berlin-and-kay-found

### 6. Which are legitimate reasons to be cautious about evidence for the origin of language?

A. Symbolic artefacts are a proxy for symbolic capacity, not a direct observation
B. Speech leaves no direct fossil record
C. Origins cannot be studied scientifically at all
D. The descended larynx is now known in other species, weakening that inference

**Answer:** A. Symbolic artefacts are a proxy for symbolic capacity, not a direct observation; B. Speech leaves no direct fossil record; D. The descended larynx is now known in other species, weakening that inference

**Why:** The fourth overshoots. Indirect evidence is still evidence, and the genetic and comparative work has narrowed the space of plausible accounts considerably. The honest statement is that the question is underdetermined, not that it is unanswerable.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/origins-evolution-and-linguistic-relativity/which-are-legitimate-reasons-to-be-cautious-about-evidence-for-the

### 7. Match each domain to the relativity finding associated with it.

**Answer:**

- Colour terms → Basic terms emerge in a near-fixed order
- Russian blues → Faster discrimination that vanishes under verbal load
- Guugu Yimithirr → Absolute directions and unusually accurate orientation
- Grammatical gender → A small effect on adjectives chosen, with replication difficulties

**Why:** Attaching the caveat to the gender result is part of learning it. Effects in this literature are often small and not always replicable, and a student who learns the finding without the caveat has learned something more confident than the evidence supports.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/origins-evolution-and-linguistic-relativity/match-each-domain-to-the-relativity-finding-associated-with-it

### 8. Arrange these positions on language origins from the most gradualist to the most saltationist.

**Answer:**

1. Language grew continuously out of primate call systems
2. Language began in gesture and shifted channel over time
3. Language assembled from several separately evolved capacities
4. A single change enabling recursion produced language essentially at once

**Why:** Ranking them makes the axis explicit: the disagreement is about **how many steps**, and therefore about how much of language is a modification of things other animals have. The saltationist end is what makes the Pirahã recursion dispute so heated, a single counter-example matters far more to a one-step account.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/origins-evolution-and-linguistic-relativity/arrange-these-positions-on-language-origins-from-the-most-gradualist

### 9. The claim that a language has dozens of words for snow, even if true, would not by itself show anything about how its speakers think.

**Answer:** True

**Why:** **True**, and this is the reason the story is worth correcting even beyond its factual problems. Vocabulary reflects what a community needs to talk about; English has dozens of words for kinds of vehicle, and nobody infers a distinctive perception of traffic from it.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/origins-evolution-and-linguistic-relativity/the-claim-that-a-language-has-dozens-of-words-for-snow-even-if-true

### 10. Complete the account of the two hypotheses.

**Answer:** The strong claim, that language determines what can be thought, is called linguistic **determinism** and has been effectively abandoned. The weak claim, that habitual patterns influence attention and memory, is called linguistic **relativity**. Evidence for the weak version comes from the ordering of basic **colour** terms and from languages that use **absolute** directions instead of left and right.

**Why:** Keeping the two names apart is most of the work in this area. Almost every popular treatment attributes evidence for the weak version to the strong one, which is how a modest and interesting finding about attention becomes the claim that speakers of different languages live in different worlds.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/origins-evolution-and-linguistic-relativity/complete-the-account-of-the-two-hypotheses