Practice question · Match the pairs
Match each domain to the relativity finding associated with it.
- Colour terms
- Russian blues
- Guugu Yimithirr
- Grammatical gender
- A small effect on adjectives chosen, with replication difficulties
- Absolute directions and unusually accurate orientation
- Faster discrimination that vanishes under verbal load
- Basic terms emerge in a near-fixed order
Hints
- Each domain contributed a different kind of evidence.
- The finding with replication difficulties is the gender one.
Show the 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.
Practise Origins, Evolution and Linguistic Relativity
The app has 3 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Languages I is free to start.
More questions on Origins, Evolution and Linguistic Relativity
- The Russian-blues advantage disappears when speakers perform a verbal task at the same time. Why does that…
- Sort each claim by whether it belongs to linguistic DETERMINISM or the weaker RELATIVITY.
- FOXP2 is best described as the gene for language.
- The human descended larynx increases choking hazards yet expands phonetic range. Why does this morphological…
- What is the maximum number of basic colour terms Berlin and Kay found in any language?
- Which are legitimate reasons to be cautious about evidence for the origin of language?
- Arrange these positions on language origins from the most gradualist to the most saltationist.
- The claim that a language has dozens of words for snow, even if true, would not by itself show anything about…
- Complete the account of the two hypotheses.