Chapter 13: Language Diversity

• Language at Large 13.1: The great language extinction

13.1 What Do Languages Have in Common?

• How universal are language universals?
• How cognitively meaningful are language universals?
• Box 13.1: Language change through language contact
• 13.1 Questions to Contemplate

13.2 Explaining Similarities across Languages

• Learning biases
• Researchers at Work 13.1: Universals and learning biases
• Method 13.1: How well do artificial language learning experiments reflect real learning?
• Speakers’ choices
• Box 13.2: Do genes contribute to language diversity
• Communicative efficiency
• Box 13.3: Can social pressure make languages less efficient?
• 13.2 Questions to Contemplate

13.3 Words, Concepts, and Cultures

• Different words, different thoughts?
• Do words reflect culturally important concepts?
• Box 13.4: Variations in color vocabulary
• Word-to-culture mismatches
• Do words help organize thoughts?
• A colorful case study
• Adjusting the language dial
• Box 13.5: ERP evidence for language effects on perception
• 13.3 Questions to Contemplate

13.4 Language Structure and the Connection between Culture and Mind

• Does grammar affect how we conceptualize events?
• Does culture shape grammar?
• Method 13.2 Language intrusion and the variable Whorf effect
• Supercharged linguistic skills
• Box 13.6: Mark Twain on the awful memory-taxing syntax of German
• 13.4 Questions to Contemplate

13.5 One Mind, Multiple Languages

• A native language can be influenced by later-learned languages
• Mixing languages
• Activating cultural values
• Language at Large 13.2: Can your language make you broke and fat?
• 13.5 Questions to Contemplate
• Digging Deeper: Are all languages equally complex?

 

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