Geographical Origins of Language Structures

Oded Galor, Ömer Özak and Assaf Sarid

No 2018-5, Working Papers from Brown University, Department of Economics

Abstract: This research explores the geographical origins of the coevolution of cultural and linguistic traits in the course of human history, relating the geographical roots of long-term orientation to the structure of the future tense, the agricultural determinants of gender bias to the presence of sex-based grammatical gender, and the ecological origins of hierarchical orientation to the existence of politeness distinctions. The study advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that: (i) variations in geographical characteristics that were conducive to higher natural return to agricultural investment contributed to the existing cross-language variations in the structure of the future tense, (ii) the agricultural determinants of gender gap in agricultural productivity fostered the existence of sex-based grammatical gender, and (iii) the ecological origins of hierarchical societies triggered the emergence of politeness distinctions.

Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-evo, nep-gro and nep-his
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Working Paper: Geographical Origins of Language Structures (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bro:econwp:2018-5

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