Does the language you speak really affect how you see the future?

The way hoi polloi talk about the futurity varies from language to language . Some have a well - defined time to come tense , while others distinguish much between present and future . But does this point of grammar actually affect how we see the world ?

As you may have seen in some recent reports elsewhere in the blogosphere , that question work the basis for a young paper by Yale researcher Keith Chen . Chen – who , it should be point out , is an economist , not a polyglot – is presently working on a report in which he see the event of the future tense in different cultures ’ time to come - oriented doings .

The thought is that some language have very clear grammar governing the succeeding tense – like in English , how we can distinguish between “ I am doing something ” and “ I will do something ” – whereas other languages do n’t . His hypothesis is that the former , the so - call strong future clip references ( FTR ) languages , are more likely to make poor decision in terms of design for the future , which means higher rates of obesity , debt , smoke , boozing , and so away .

Hostinger Coupon Code 15% Off

It ’s for certain an challenging idea , and it ’s already attracted some tending despite the fact that Chen has n’t even completed his paper , let alone submitted it for review . That ’s unfortunate , as there seem to be some real issues with the lingual data point meant to back up the argument . As Geoffrey Pullam points out over at Language Log , it ’s not really that comfortable to cleanly categorize language as unassailable or weak FTR .

Sure , English habituate “ will ” to cross off succeeding tense , but another valid constructing is , “ I am go to ” , which relies on the present tense verb “ am . ” That is n’t a trivial ambiguity , peculiarly when we ’re speak about what are supposed to be middling extreme differences between the two type of linguistic process . And , as Pullam point out , English is one of the most heavily canvass spoken language on the planet – if we ca n’t be indisputable how to accurately categorize that , what prospect do we have for all the others ? Indeed , this may just be a case of finding an apparent correlation in some noisy data and then mistaking it for a causal link , as Pullam writes :

I also worry that it is too light to find correlation of this variety , and we do n’t have any idea just how easy until a concert effort has been made to show that the inauthentic ones are not sufferable . For model , if we took “ has ( vs. does not have ) pharyngeal consonant ” , or “ habit ( vs. does not use ) close front rounded vowels ” , would we find correlativity there too ?

Burning Blade Tavern Epic Universe

Pullam ’s whole postis worth show for more on this , as indeed isChen ’s working paper . Again , it ’s worth repoint out that this newspaper has n’t even been finished , let alone equal reviewed and published , so the finished intersection might well have some interesting thing to say . Until then , it ’s best to hold off on base too many personality analyze off of how people use the future tense .

epitome byQuinn Dombrowski .

Spotted onMetafilter .

Ideapad3i