Practice question · True or false
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.
Hints
- Consider whether English speakers perceive traffic unusually because of its vehicle vocabulary.
- Vocabulary size tracks what a community talks about, not how it perceives.
Show the 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.
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?
- Match each domain to the relativity finding associated with it.
- Arrange these positions on language origins from the most gradualist to the most saltationist.
- Complete the account of the two hypotheses.