Scope of linguistic influence: Does a classifier system alter object concepts?

Abstract

Whether and to what extent conceptual structure is universal is of great importance for understanding the nature of human concepts. Two major factors that might affect concepts are language and culture. The authors investigated whether these 2 factors affect concepts of everyday objects in any significant ways. Specifically, they tested (a) whether the system of grammatical categorization by classifiers influenced the conceptual structure of speakers of classifier languages, and (b) whether Westerners organized object concepts around taxonomic relations whereas Easterners organized them around thematic relations, as proposed by R. E. Nisbett (2003). The relative importance of 3 types of relations--taxonomic, thematic, and classifier--for Chinese and German speakers was tested using a range of tasks, including categorization, similarity judgment, property induction, and fast-speed word-picture matching. Some support for linguistic relativity as well as for the cultural-specific cognition proposal was found in some tasks, but these effects were miniscule compared with the importance of taxonomic and thematic relations for both language-culture groups. The authors conclude that the global structure of everyday object concepts is strikingly similar across different cultures and languages.

Do Language-Specific Categories Shape Conceptual Processing? Mandarin Classifier Distinctions Influence Eye Gaze Behavior, but only During Linguistic Processing

“…Since Mandarin speakers use classifier information to direct overt attention, as shown in the (almost identical) Experiment 1, the absence of the critical attention shift in Experiment 2 is not a procedural artifact. The findings of Experiment 2 are consistent with a priming study reported by Saalbach and Imai (2007;see Gao and Malt, 2009). These researchers found that reaction times were not facilitated by providing a written prime from the same classifier category as the name of a visually-depicted target.…”

“…Whereas research using offline measures has found a strong influence of Mandarin classifiers on conceptualization, research using more online (or implicit) measures (e.g., Saalbach and Imai, 2007;Gao and Malt, 2009; Experiment 4) has revealed either no classifier effects or only modest ones. Saalbach and Imai (2007), for example, conducted a priming experiment with printed word primes and picture targets.…”

“…Mandarin speakers appear to be exquisitely sensitive to classifier categories in a variety of situations, including inductive reasoning, making preference judgments, remembering objects and judging object similarity (e.g., Schmitt and Zhang, 1998;Zhang and Schmitt, 1998;Saalbach and Imai, 2007). For example, Zhang and Schmitt asked whether objects that take the classifier ba3 for "graspable objects" would become more associated with "graspableness", such that speakers direct attention to this property, even outside the linguistic realm.…”

“…Saalbach and Imai (2007), for example, conducted a priming experiment with printed word primes and picture targets. Participants were asked to judge whether the printed word and the visual object matched.…”

All Giraffes Have Female‐Specific Properties: Influence of Grammatical Gender on Deductive Reasoning About Sex‐Specific Properties in German Speakers

“…To conclude, simply demonstrating a cross-linguistic difference (or lack of it) due to a given linguistic category and arguing for (or against) the Whorfian hypothesis is no longer satisfactory to fully understand the relation between language and thought (Imai & Masuda, 2013;Imai & Mazuka, 2007;Imai & Saalbach, 2010;Saalbach & Imai, 2007. The present research not only showed that grammatical gender affects German speakers' reasoning about sex-specific properties but also specified how the influence arises and the scope of the influence.…”