Geographical Origins of Language Structures

Oded Galor, Ömer Özak and Assaf Sarid

No 1801, Departmental Working Papers from Southern Methodist 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.

Keywords: Comparative Development; Cultural Evolution; Language Structure; Future Tense; Politeness Distinctions; Long-Term Orientation; Grammatical Gender; Gender Bias; Hierarchy; Emergence of States (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D01 D03 I25 J16 J24 O1 O10 O11 O12 O40 O43 O44 Z10 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo and nep-gro
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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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